Durban — EThekwini Metro might have spent more than R500 million on a street-light contract before terminating it because of fictitious invoices.
Non-functioning street lights have been a thorn in the side of ratepayers, who have lambasted their ward councillors for not taking action to have streets and highways lit up at night.
Active Citizens Coalition (ACC) PR councillor Imtiaz Syed put questions regarding street lights to the municipality in July, 2022. Syed said he had asked what had caused the problem.
At a city council meeting, Syed was told the problem was due to an old organogram, lack of resources, Covid-19 and the street-light contract being terminated in 2019.
The metro also said the problem was due to limited resources, with about 100 technical staff to maintain street lights across the metro, and a limited number of bucket trucks and insufficient materials.
Last week, Syed was told a contract commenced in May, 2019 with a two-year budget of R130m. Syed said due to mismanagement, fraud and corruption, by the end of January 2020, the metro had spent more than R300m within nine months, and the contract had to be stopped.
“It has been alleged that some other fictitious invoices were signed after the contract was stopped and as a result, the total expenditure on this contract is said to have been more than R500m.
“Since the contract was stopped in February 2020, there is no contract in place, and the internal staff are not coping with all the street-light faults, hence the city is dark.”
Syed said R579m could have been spent. He said he was waiting for a report from eThekwini’s city integrity and investigations unit on the matter. Syed pointed out that the contract ended before its 24-month lifespan.
“It is not clear if the unit has concluded its investigation and the recommendations thereof. It cannot be overemphasised that the street lights are not functional, and there is no consequence management,” he said.
A report from the City’s human settlements and infrastructure committee electricity unit in May, 2020 requested the transfer of funds within the electricity unit’s budget in the 2019/2020 financial year, to offset overexpenditure, for the installation and replacement of lamps and luminaries, and repairs to outdoor street-lighting installations for a period of 24 months. The report stated that “to counteract the overexpenditure, the reallocation of funds is necessary”.
The report further stated that there had been overexpenditure on two contracts involving street-lighting because of network expansion exceeding forecasts; increased cable theft and vandalism; natural disasters like storms and flooding eroding the network; internal inspections identifying more maintenance requirements than anticipated; increased demand for high-mast lights in crime-ridden areas; and supplemented repairs at some stadiums, using contracts.
At a full council meeting in July, ANC councillor Zama Sokhabase said the City needed a budget of about R200m for a street-light contract for 24 to 36 months.
Syed said while exploring reasons for such long-term problems, the ACC had established that there was a high rate of vandalism and theft of municipal infrastructure.
Meanwhile, sections of Chatsworth’s Higginson Highway had been left in the dark due to the theft of cables after street poles were cut down.
Concerned Chatsworth resident Suren Ganapathie said all role-players were fully aware of the situation but ratepaying residents risked their lives driving there at night.
Ganapathie said: “What has the electricity department done to prevent this or find alternative ways to curb this crime?”
He said it was futile repairing or replacing street lights if the lights were continuously being damaged or were prone to cable theft.
Ganapathie said he was informed that electricians could not work on Higginson Highway for the whole year.
“The electricity unit advises residents to look after the infrastructure. But who will sit on the highway for 24 hours monitoring the street lights? Residents report to the Community Policing Forum and the police when they notice vandalism in progress. But measures should have been implemented from the outset to protect our street lights,” Ganapathie said.
Daily News