Cape Town - More than 40 Bitou municipal officials face suspension after allegedly bypassing electricity meters and contributing to more than R9 million in electricity losses for the cash-strapped municipality during the last financial year.
In an effort to find the source of the huge losses - highlighted in Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu’s report as an issue of concern - the municipality embarked on a sting operation on Tuesday night after an internal investigation revealed 47 municipal officials had not bought electricity in five years.
“As a starting point we wanted to clean our own house first, before knocking on the door of the greater public. We therefore decided to launch an internal forensic investigation to find the source of the losses and we were surprised to find that 47 of our own staff were possibly involved in this,” Bitou mayor Memory Booysen said.
With the help of independent electricians, auditors and the police, municipal officials had gone to each of the identified homes to inspect electricity meters.
“We decided to get independent electricians in as we did not want information about the sting operation to be leaked, and we also feared that some of our own electricians could have assisted the officials in bypassing the meters, possibly accepting bribes in exchange for it.”
More than 40 of the meters on the properties inspected were found to have been tampered with.
“We could not access all the homes as owners literally had their pitbulls meet us at the door, while others claimed their keys were with their spouses. But we are going back there today (on Wednesday).”
Municipal manager Allen Paulse said the most senior officials implicated in the matter would be suspended immediately while the rest would be suspended once disciplinary hearings had been finalised.
“We are going to start with disciplinary hearings against all the officials involved and if they are found to be guilty of theft they will be dismissed.”
Not all of those involved had been suspended because that would seriously affect service delivery.
“The officials are from various departments in the municipality and we don’t want them to earn a salary and sit at home while we finalise the hearings. We want them at work, earning those salaries.”
Booysen said the decision to suspend the more senior officials immediately was because they had abused their position of trust. “Unfortunately this will impact on service delivery, but we ask the people of Bitou to be patient as this is a balancing act between rooting out corruption and service delivery.”
Paulse added that if an official was found guilty of theft they would not only be dismissed but the municipality would hand them over to the police and criminal charges could follow.
He said the R9m in electricity losses was only in a single financial year. “We found that some of these officials had not purchased electricity in five years, so we are trying to establish how much the actual losses were over this period.”
Booysen said this was the tip of the iceberg, and the next step was to find other residents who were doing the same.
Garden Route Media