Fifth Mayoral Letter – 8th November 2011
Fifth Mayoral Letter from Memory Booysen
Information Technology.
First and foremost our thanks to Jeremy Ord and his team from Dimension Data who paid us a preliminary visit on 26 September and then followed up with a 5 member working team who then did an initial evaluation over three days a week later. Even at this early stage it is clear that we have some very serious IT problems which require urgent attention. There is however also some good news in that some of the programmes are from reputable companies who can and will back up their products.
To single out just one of the problems; it was found that our official website (www.plett.gov.za) is woefully inadequate and in fact non-compliant with what we are legally required to display. It will be attended to as a priority in order to improve the quantity and quality of information available to the public. We have a follow-up meeting with the Dimension Data team on 9 November 2011.
Personnel.
Municipal Manager.
The oral part of the Municipal Manager’s disciplinary hearing has now been completed before Judge Pete Combrinck. The Judge ordered that the municipality’s representative must submit its written Heads of Argument by 26 October and then the Municipal Manager’s representative must submit his written reply by 9 November, where-after judgement will be given on 1 December 2011.
Alleged “Copper Theft.”
Four persons working in the Water Department were arrested when trying to sell pipe fittings belonging to the municipality to a scrap metal dealer. They have been suspended and the disciplinary process against them is in progress.
Organisation Structural Design.
It has been clear from the outset that the way in which the municipality is structured is far from ideal. The existing structure is top-heavy and there are too many departments. There are a number of instances where the reporting structure gives rise to a one-on-one reporting structure and even an instance where there is no reporting structure. In many instances there are not even job descriptions for positions.
On a broader basis, key responsibilities have been arbitrarily moved from one department to another without clearly spelling out exactly who is responsible for what and without the necessary skills being in place to discharge the responsibility. As you can imagine this makes the overall management very difficult and it is not only impossible to carry out functions properly but also impossible to manage and hold the personnel accountable.
All these problems will be dealt with during the structural re-design of the entire organisation. The Provincial Government has come to our assistance to make this possible. They are currently evaluating tenders. We are hopeful that a professional service provider will be appointed soon to commence with the work by end of November.
Only once it has been determined exactly what structure is needed to do the work of the municipality efficiently, what posts are needed, a proper job description for each post has been done and a suitable person with the required skills has been placed in the relevant post will it be possible to start managing the municipality in an efficient and sustainable manner. I, for one, look forward to the day when we know exactly who is responsible for what and management can then manage properly.
Staff Discipline.
We are facing a fair amount of criticism that months after taking over the municipality we have not yet made good on our election promises; to expose the corruption we alleged existed in the organisation and to deal appropriately with those found to be complicit.
Once again, it takes time and resources to properly investigate alleged instances of corruption. Due to a lack of capacity and resources we have not progressed as far and as fast as we would have liked to.
However, we have made significant progress in our investigations and have managed to put together a number of dossiers proving widespread and in some instances very serious maladministration / corruption, which we hope to start prosecuting soon.
We are however always mindful that these issues involve employees (and their families) and that we cannot go off half-cocked and risk harming innocent people. Where we have solid cases, and there are many, we must still follow the letter of the law.
There are a number of issues that have to be taken into account such as complicated labour laws and collective agreements between organised labour and ourselves, and the employer organisation, SALGA, as to how discipline must be dealt with.
The processes to be followed are expensive, both from the point of actual funds and in personnel terms. Not only that but they can be extremely time consuming as well. It will take many months of hard work to deal with just those that we have investigated so far.
It must also be remembered that when a hearing is in progress, the investigator must give evidence and therefore cannot investigate other matters for the period he is so occupied.
We cannot rush these matters so, as and when the time is right we will proceed with each one, in the full knowledge that we have a winnable case and have all our ducks in a row in that particular matter.
Where criminality is exposed during an investigation, the investigators must in addition to the normal work also prepare evidence to hand to the SAPS and will have to testify in the resultant criminal case. As yet we have not laid any criminal charges but have had to prepare some in readiness for when the time is right and we can afford to spare the investigator for that. It is a fine line we tread and must be very careful that we don’t hamstring our own investigation process by overloading our personnel.
In a number of instances we will also probably have to take civil action to recover unauthorised and fruitless and wasteful expenditure from those responsible. That requires yet more resources and time. In a number of instances our chances of recovery are constrained by prescription (36 months) and we will not be able to bring civil claims. Council has established a multi-party committee to make recommendations to it with regard to the determination and recovery of fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Councillors’ Discipline.
As a result of the incidents during our first council meeting (29 June – 8 July) an investigation must be held. The council’s Standing Procedure requires that this must be done by a committee of councillors under the chairmanship of the Speaker. Due to the fact that all the councillors and the Speaker himself even may have been involved in transgressions of the Code of Conduct for Councillors, the Speaker requested the MEC for Local Government to appoint an independent person to do so instead.
The MEC has agreed and has appointed Adv A Schmidt to do so and make recommendations to him.
Dump Site.
This remains a major headache for us. Not only have our ratepayers been giving us flack but also the Provincial and National Authorities. The Acting Municipal Manager has given the matter a lot of attention over the past few weeks and has met with the I&APs to try to explain the situation. He has managed to persuade the Authorities to assist us with sorting out the problem, which we clearly do not have the capacity to deal with on our own.
He and I are also talking to our neighbours, Knysna, to find innovative ways to deal with refuse removal, which ultimately will be of benefit to both towns. We will keep you posted.
Airport.
There appears to be some misunderstanding about exactly what the process is that has been and is being followed with regard to the airport. There are some pretty wild rumours flying about alleging corruption on the part of everybody from officials to politicians and so-called out-of-town interests and even major national civil engineering companies.
I want to assure everybody that the correct procedures are being followed to the letter by the officials that are handling this matter. It has not been dealt with by any politicians in the past nor is it currently being dealt with by politicians. It is an administrative process and proposals have been evaluated and dealt with by an independent consultant, professional advisory committee and a specialist aviation lawyer.
These things take time, and I appeal to everybody to exercise patience and restraint and to allow the necessary work to be done without undue pressure and interference. From my side, I will endeavour to give regular updates as and when progress is made, but I do not want to continually hassle these people lest I then (correctly) be accused of interfering in the process.
We are fully aware of the great need Plett (and Knysna) have for this airport to work, but we only have one bite at the cherry and we have to ensure that no mistakes are made.
Legal issues.
The litigation seems to be never-ending. Once again, I must point out that when I deal with legal matters anywhere in my newsletters, please be aware of the fact that I am a layperson and what I say is my understanding of information given to me which I may possibly have misunderstood.
Application for Interdict.
As has been widely reported in the media, the speaker lost his bid to interdict the councillors to comply with the rules of order in the council chamber and to interdict the Municipal Law Enforcement Unit to carry out his instruction to remove misbehaving councillors from the chamber, with costs awarded against him. He also lost the counter application brought against him, but no costs were awarded in that instance.
I am not in a position at present to express an opinion on the judgement, save to say that having been present in the meeting, I was surprised by the finding. The speaker’s counsel is studying the judgement and will recommend a way forward.
Despite the speaker having announced his intention to request the DA to allow him to resign in the interest of order in the council , the ultimate decision does not lie with the speaker or local party structure; the DA Federal Executive will decide.
The issue of costs has been raised in relation to what I had said in the past regarding the recovery of costs in this matter. The question of whether or not the costs in the matter were fruitless and wasteful and should be recovered is one which will in any event, by law, be considered separately by the committee established for that purpose. There is a process to be followed.
R28m Lemon.
We have now filed our answering papers in this land deal matter which will go to court on 1 December. In the process of drafting the papers a very thorough and in-depth investigation of the whole matter was conducted. Due to this matter being sub-judice I cannot say more about what emerged at this point, other than that we are very confident of our case.
Restaurant Leases.
Here again, there are untruthful rumours doing the rounds. It is alleged that a deal has been reached between the current Lookout Deck leaseholder and the speaker that he will retain the lease.
The facts are however as follows:
A company owned by the current lease holder and his staff was the highest bidder. However, the lease was awarded by the municipality’s Supply Chain Management to the second highest bidder. This was challenged by the highest bidder and the municipality lost with costs awarded against us. The court set aside the award but did not go as far as awarding the bid to them. They have appealed that aspect and we are awaiting the court’s decision.
The Moby Dicks bid process had to be abandoned due to alleged irregularities. It has been pointed out to us that the process that was followed was also not correct and a new and correct process will be initiated in due course.
Audit 2010/2011.
A team from the Auditor – General has been busy auditing our 2010/2011 books for the past few weeks. Last week I received a letter from the A-G informing me that the municipality had failed to submit its financial statements to him on due date as required. We had missed the cut-off by a week. The A-G’s finding was that the late submission was as a result of insufficient capacity on the part of the municipality. We will deal with that shortcoming during the organizational redesign. I understand that we will receive the audit results by end November.
Finances.
Council will soon be asked to decide on whether or not to take up a R30m loan to alleviate our immediate cash flow problems. This is not a long term solution, but rather crisis management. Despite drastic cost cutting measures and turning over every cent, our monthly expenditure still exceeds our monthly income, which of course exacerbates our overall financial position. We have a revenue enhancement project but it will take time for its effect to become apparent.
Blue Flag status.
As everybody probably knows by now, two of our beaches, Robberg 5 and Keurboomstrand have attained Blue Flag status. A big thank you to Mark Fourie and his team.
Thank you for your ongoing support and kind offers of assistance.
Kind regards,
Memory Booysen
Mayor
If you would like to be added to the distribution list, please email debiknicholson@msn.com.