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The Mangaung metropolitan municipality has blamed an “administrative error” for the overpayment of about R556,000 to former councillors who continued receiving salaries for three months after leaving the council following the 2024 national and provincial elections.
The issue came under scrutiny during the municipality’s appearance before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) on Wednesday, where MPs questioned municipal officials about the payments and the delay in recovering the money.
DA MP Farhat Essack asked Mangaung CFO Zuziwe Lydia Thekiso to explain how more than half a million rand had been paid to councillors who were no longer serving in the municipality.
“There is this issue of the overpayment of councillors. Are you aware of that? How is it that more than half a million rand, to be precise, my notes show me R567,000 got overpaid? I think you owe this committee an explanation as to which councillors this money was paid to and which political parties benefitted,” Essack said.
Thekiso told the committee the overpayments occurred after several Mangaung councillors were elected to provincial legislatures and parliament following the May 2024 elections.
“This was a pure slip of administration because councillors notified their resignations and they had been terminated from the HR system, but information from HR was delayed by three months and these councillors were paid from June, July and August after the elections took place in May 2024,” she said.
According to Thekiso, six former councillors continued receiving salaries of between R35,000 and R40,000 a month during the period.
“They were ordinary councillors with a remuneration of R35,000 to R40,000. When you multiply that you get R556,000 over time, which is an error in administration rather than an undue benefit to the councillors,” she said.
She said the affected councillors were from the DA and the Freedom Front Plus and had shown a willingness to return the money.
“The councillors have been pleading to pay back the money. I actually came across another letter from one of the councillors who said ‘I am frustrated. I want to pay back the money but I am not getting guidance on what to do’,” said Thekiso.
“There is no resistance from the councillors but there is a problem from the city,” she said.
Thekiso added that municipal officials were working to facilitate repayment arrangements. “We are working in assisting the payroll under corporate services to go and make sure that we enter into an arrangement and make sure that we get back that money.”
Essack highlighted that the issue had been unresolved for nearly two years, prompting Scopa chairperson Songezo Zibi to question why the municipality had not simply provided the former councillors with banking details to repay the funds.
“We need to open an account for them and they can pay into a municipal account. Those things can be solved and we are already on it,” Thekiso responded.
Zibi criticised the municipality’s handling of the matter, saying officials responsible should be held accountable.
“This appears to me that someone didn’t do their job and I hope they are being disciplined, and please don’t tell me you just shrugged your shoulders,” he said.
“Someone there did not do the work that they were supposed to do and you need to hold them accountable. They did not take it seriously enough. It can’t just be let go. You shouldn’t have to answer for this thing in parliament.”
Thekiso said a report would be compiled once the recovery process had been completed.
The report would be given to the city manager.
The revelations emerged during Scopa’s hearings into the latest findings of the auditor-general and investigations by the Special Investigating Unit involving Mangaung and Ekurhuleni metropolitan municipalities.
Last week, the committee heard that Mangaung spent 113% of its budget while achieving only 50% of its service delivery targets.
The municipality has been under provincial intervention since January 2020, with the intervention escalated to national level in April 2022. A financial recovery plan approved in September 2023 was intended to stabilise finances and restore governance, but the auditor-general found that only 58% of planned recovery activities had been implemented.
The audit also found that the municipality is still stuck in the “rescue phase” after 22 months, while auditors could not verify key information, including water revenue, overtime payments and whether some goods and services paid for had actually been delivered.
Although conditional grants increased to R788.53m during the 2024/25 financial year, Mangaung underspent by R191.73m, following an underspending of R193.59m the previous year.
National Treasury subsequently withheld R140.98m in funding because of slow project implementation affecting several infrastructure projects. - TimesLive