DURBAN - OPPOSITION parties in eThekwini Municipality have questioned the city’s commitment to fighting corruption following revelations that its blacklisting committee has been without a chairperson for the past five months.
This emerged at one of the city’s executive committee meetings last month.
The committee’s job is to determine whether the companies that are doing business with the municipality are doing so ethically and in cases where allegations of wrongdoing are substantiated, it will blacklist those companies, thereby preventing them from doing business with the municipality.
The term of the then-chairperson expired in September last year after a year in office. However, the city has argued that the committee being without a chairperson has not had a negative impact. It said the previous members were appointed by then acting city manager, Sipho Cele, on September 2, 2020, and the appointment was effective from that date and expired on September 1.
The current acting city manager Musa Mbhele is expected to appoint a new chairperson before the committee’s first meeting on February 23.
A list published by the city on its website of companies that have been blacklisted showed that the past three blacklistings were in November 2020 and the blacklistings will be lifted in 2025.
DA councillor Nicole Graham challenged the assertion that the work of the committee had not been affected.
She said they were told during an exco meeting that the committee was not sitting since there had not been a chairperson. This, she said, could therefore mean the work that should have been done had stalled.
Graham said the fact that the city officials had not bothered to inform exco that the committee had been without a chairperson for months was an indication that the municipality was not taking the fight against corruption seriously.
“It’s clear they are paying lip service to the fight against corruption, if we are not dealing with the companies that are accused of defrauding the municipality.”
IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi also poured scorn on the city’s claim that the work of the committee had not been affected by the absence of a chairperson.
“Blacklisting is the work of the blacklisting committee and that is why we believe that there is now a backlog of cases that need to be addressed. It was shocking to learn that there is no chairperson, even more so that no one knew that there was no chairperson,” Nkosi said.
Patrick Pillay of the Democratic Liberal Congress (DLC) questioned how the committee had been functioning without its head. “As DLC we were very concerned that further neglect of this committee could be detrimental to our fight to eradicate corruption.”
Municipal spokesperson Lindiwe Khuzwayo said the absence of a chairperson had not had any impact on blacklisting companies that were accused of fraud.
“The blacklisting committee members and chairperson are appointed by the city manager to serve a one-year term. The work handled by the committee has not been hindered in any way as the city continues to address cases of companies accused of fraud. These cases will come before the next meeting on February 23. The administration process of preparing and receiving blacklisting cases has never stopped,” she said.
THE MERCURY