Johannesburg -
A roads and transport chief has taken his boss and MEC Ismail Vadi to the Labour Court to challenge his suspension for allegedly exposing corruption in the department.
Loyiso Marasela - chief director: transport services - has filed an urgent application in the Johannesburg Labour Court to bar the MEC and head of department Ronald Swartz from suspending him.
The department has been perceived as one of the cleaner administrations in Gauteng.
In his affidavit, Marasela said his suspension had been “wholly unlawful and unfair”.
The department had failed to give him as much as a pre-suspension hearing.
“I submit that it’s indicative of the fact that I am being targeted for having made a protected disclosure. I submit that my protected disclosure is the only and real reason that I am in this position (suspension),” Marasela said.
He submitted a detailed account of why he was asking the court to interdict Vadi and Swartz and order his return to work.
In his papers, Marasela said his troubles began when he exposed irregular payments amounting to R19.47 million allegedly made by director of special projects Simphiwe Maphumulo and deputy director-general Noxolo Maninjwa.
In May last year, he discovered that the Transport Department had accumulated R17m on the construction of a taxi rank project in Vereeniging, he said.
On perusing the papers, he noticed that four specific payments made and authorised in March last year were irregular.
The payments were to two companies: Moreteng Investments and Bankuna Engineering, whose tasks were to build taxi ranks in Vereeniging and Roodepoort, respectively.
Marasela said Maphumulo approved payment of R 5.6m on March 10 last year and another payment of R4m.
He said Maphumulo also recommended a R7 351 991.12 payment. Maninjwa approved the money, and the payments were made to Moreteng Investments on March 14 last year.
Bankuna Engineering was paid R2 244 792.86 on March 14.
“This invoice was similarly recommended by Maphumulo and approved by Maninjwa,” Marasela said.
“What I found curious was that the invoices were not accompanied by the supervising engineering certificates. Included in the amounts on the invoices were amounts for ‘material on site’, which is not normal practice in these types of projects. I also discovered that the payment authorisations were only signed by the director and the deputy director-general and that I had been bypassed in the process.”
Marasela added that his discovery prompted him to report it to the head of department and to Vadi in June last year.
Marasela said Swartz and Vadi failed to act, which resulted in him reporting the matter to Premier David Makhura the following month.
The premier, according to court papers, did not acknowledge Marasela’s correspondence with him.
The department has filed intention to oppose. Its representative, Octavia Mamabolo, said it had no comment.
The Star