Pretoria - The executive mayor of Madibeng Local Municipality, Douglas Maimane, has come under pressure from Save Madibeng activists to conduct a skills audit amid allegations that the ANC-led administration appointed “comrades” into positions without proper qualifications.
Activists protested outside municipal offices on Friday, demanding to speak to Maimane, who was unavailable.
Organisation convenor, Sydney Monnakgotla, said all they wanted was to hand over a memorandum of demands, which included instituting a skills audit process with immediate effect.
“It is well-known that Madibeng is under performing in service delivery. It is also ravaged by corruption, and for quite a long time, the Auditor-General has expressed an opinion that many officials don’t have the requisite skills,” Monnakgotla said.
He said the hiring of poorly qualified workers was costly to the municipality, which was forced to spend more money, in addition to a R35-million monthly wage bill, to outsource services that ought to be performed by its workforce.
“We can complain about poor service delivery and about the lack of water, but the root of all that malfeasance and maladministration is as a result of people who are under-skilled and under-qualified,” he said.
The municipality was also grappling with the problem of “ghost employees”, he said.
“This is corruption done by some officials in the municipality who facilitate the payments to ghost employees every month. It means the money is going to the pockets of some individuals because the employees on the payroll don’t exist,” Monnakgotla said.
The municipality, he said, was facing allegations of employing people with fraudulent qualifications, adding that the skills audit would assist in addressing the problem of fake qualifications.
Monnakgotla said: “Those are ANC comrades. The elections are over, and they are now being rewarded. We don’t have a problem with ANC people being hired at the municipality, but let us make sure we hire those with the requisite skills.”
He said Save Madibeng was mobilising the community to rally behind the vision of having a clean administration capable of providing basic services.
Chief of staff Senzo Mgqongolo dismissed allegations that the governing party appointed “comrades” for their contributions during the elections.
“It is political grandstanding by Save Madibeng. There’s no political organisation which has benefited people. What we know is we have inherited lots of challenges in terms of officials who are not competent to do what they are doing. We are in the process of cleaning our system.”
Mgqongolo said the mayor had already pronounced that there must be a qualifications verification process when he assumed office.
According to him, the verification process was under way and had so far detected cases of people hired with fake matric certificates. He said the problem of ghost workers could only be verified through the ongoing process.
Pretoria News