DURBAN - The uMkhanyakude municipal manager, Mxolisi Nkosi, is fighting his suspension after an audit found the municipality awash with unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Mkhanyakude is the northernmost of the 11 districts in KwaZulu-Natal. Nkosi received the suspension letter from municipal administrator, Bamba Ndwandwe, last week.
Nkosi said he responded to the letter, stating that Ndwandwe had no right to suspend him.
Nkosi said that in terms of the Municipalities Act, the council hires and fires municipal managers, therefore he was not accepting the precautionary suspension by the administrator without the council resolution.
In the suspension letter, which the Daily News has seen, Ndwandwe said he had been waiting for a council meeting to be able to meet so that it can formalise the deliberations of the council workshop of May on the Audit Outcome for the year ending in June 2020, which had adverse findings.
Ndwandwe wrote this was a regression from the previous two financial years, which were qualified opinions respectively. He wrote that “to exacerbate the negative impact of the said audit outcome”, the municipality received eight disparaging cases of material irregularities from the auditor-general, of which many were due to the lack of management action on the audit findings of 2018/19.
“The municipality is awash with unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure which has been growing in leaps and bounds, year in and year out. There is no evidence in the system whatsoever of a Section 32 Municipal Financial Management Act report to the council to introduce measures and processes contemplated in the act.
“Instead there are indications that in the last two financial years there have been unlawful write-off of irregular expenditure in which the role of senior managers, including the accounting officer, merit appropriate investigations.”
In the letter, Ndwandwe said that there were serious allegations against Nkosi that have been brought to his attention.
He said the allegations merited the investigations to determine whether there was basis for charges to be preferred against Nkosi or not.
Attempts to get comments from Ndwandwe were unsuccessful.
He did not respond to messages that were sent to him from Tuesday.
Daily News