The North West Provincial Legislature Portfolio Committee on Premier, Finance, Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs, has summoned the accounting officers at the Dr. Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality in Vryburg to appear before it on Friday, to explain the procurement of the controversial R38 million shack call centre at the municipality.
This follows media reports that the struggling district municipality created a duplicate call centre with public funds that were meant for service delivery and erected the “call centre” on the municipality premises.
The centre is allegedly not in operation, without staff members and that supply chain management processes were not followed.
This was however denied by the municipality manager, Itumeleng Jonas.
“We have not yet paid R38 million to any service provider since the tender was awarded to the service provider in 2022 for a period of three years.
We have thus far paid not more than R5.5 million, mainly for the operation, maintenance, and establishment of a call centre. This is going to cost the municipality R671 000 per month,” said Jonas who was speaking on YouFM News Hour programme.
He said the service provider had to erect a temporary structure on the municipal grounds, as the room that was chosen to be a call centre, was not spacious enough to build a proper call centre.
Jonas explained that the call centre has been in operation for several days, but due to a dispute regarding the invoice between the Director of Community Service, the centre workers haven’t reported for duty, because of non-payments.
Meanwhile, the municipality councillor, Gaolatlhe Kgabo, said he blew the lid years ago about the tender, but his warnings were allegedly ignored by the then Executive Mayor and Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA).
Kgabo, who has been in suspension for the past two years for reporting about the tender, alleges that due processes were not followed in the awarding of the tender, and called on authorities to investigate those involved in the awarding of the tender.
“There was conflict of interests as some evaluation and adjudication committee members are related.
One of their cousins was appointed as the contractor, and they were supposed to recuse themselves,” alleges Kgabo. The Portfolio committee chairperson, Aaron Motswana, expressed shock and dismay on the procurement of the non-existent call centre.
“You can’t bring one chair, one desktop, one chair and telephone and you call that a call centre.
The reason why we as the committee say it’s non-existent, it’s because it’s a makeshift of what is supposed to be a call centre.
It is not what you can justify calling a call centre. For us it’s non-existent,” said Motswana.
He acknowledged that the committee received information from a whistleblower, but due to some government commitments, the matter was not followed.
Motswana said it is disappointing that monies meant for service delivery, was diverted to procure the call centre not needed by the municipality.
“It is a den of thieves where they have run out of ideas as to how to then continue stealing money.
Now they have to sit down and hedge some ideas that we can introduce to generate invoices and continue to make irregular expenditures,” explained Motswana.
He said they had invited the Special Investigative Unit, Hawks, Municipality, and relevant stakeholders to the meeting.
Motswana emphasised that they would institute civil litigation against all the people involved in the matter, including councillors who voted for it, ask the department of Treasury to immediately withhold the municipality equitable share and grants, until it pays back the money.
