By Celani Sikhakhane
The Jozini Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal is under fire for over R1.4-million that was meant to be paid to an IT service provider but was paid to the wrong account.
The irregular payment was noticed by a municipal official last year after it emerged that the account the money had been paid into did not match that of the service provider.
Municipal manager Jaconia Mngomezulu told a council meeting the municipality had opened a case of fraud at the local police station.
The matter caught the attention of ActionSA in KZN, which has raised questions over the alleged fraud.
The party has also written to Bongi Sithole-Moloi, the KZN MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, to ask her to conduct a forensic investigation.
“There are so many questionable things about this matter,” said Zwakele Mncwango, KZN provincial chairperson of ActionSA. “The municipality manager claims that he has laid criminal charges over the matter but he has not provided a case number.
“We suspect that this act of corruption [is] linked [to] the senior officials. It can’t be possible that after five months no one picked up that the funds were paid to the wrong account. We want to know who the account belongs to,” said Mncwango.
He said no one seemed to care about the problem of corruption in KZN rural municipalities.
Jozini Municipality spokesperson Scelo Gumbi could not be reached for comment.
KZN Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs spokesperson Siboniso Mngadi said Sithole-Moloi had received the letter from Mncwango and would act accordingly because fighting corruption was a priority for the MEC.
Pictured above: Jozini Municipality municipal manager Jaconia Mngomezulu.
Image source: Jozini
