One of the officials of a troubled North West municipality who was allegedly appointed as manager of water and sanitation without qualifications claims he was only helping out in the role for four months.
Alfred Spele, a sanitation controller in the Ditsobotla municipality, was allegedly made water and sanitation manager despite lacking the required qualification to hold such a crucial post.
The municipality is one of the worst run in the country which has had more than 12 municipal managers, two administrators and two mayors in just five years.
So bad is the state of service delivery that many residents of Lichtenburg where the municipality sits live without water with constant power cuts and heaps of uncollected refuse on almost every corner.
Spele's position is one of eight that are being investigated by the public protector's office after they were handed over to people without qualifications. Details of the probe were leaked on social media on Monday.
Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane's spokesperson Oupa Segalwe confirmed that the document formed part of their communication with a person who laid a complaint against the municipality.
Segalwe said they have escalated the matter to the office of the North West co-operative governance MEC Lena Miga as the municipality has not been co-operating with their office since the investigations began.
Municipal spokesperson Puis Batsile said Spele “acted” in the position of water and sanitation manager before a permanent replacement was recently found.
But Spele insisted he never acted in the position.
“I remained in my position and I was just helping out because a controller is a junior to the manager in the department and we were two controllers in the department,” Spele said.
Spele said as one of two sanitation controllers at the municipality he “only helped out” when the position had become vacant for four months this year.
Although Spele insisted that he possesses a matric certificate and qualified for the position of sanitation controller, when asked what qualifications his position requires, he asked Sowetan to call him again later so that he could check the requirement as per the 2013 advert for his post.
His appointment in 2013 was also surrounded by controversy after allegations that he did not qualify for the position. When Sowetan called again at 7pm, he said he wasn't yet home to find the advert of the post.
Other posts listed in the document which was widely circulated were that of manager internal audit, senior fleet officer, manager security services with their highest qualifications being either grade 11 or matric.
One of Ditsobotla's biggest employers, Clover, announced in June that it would be moving its cheese factory from Litchenburg under Ditsobotla local municipality to Queensburgh in KwaZulu-Natal.
Clover at the time cited years of “experiencing water and power outages and the surrounding infrastructure has not been maintained by the municipality”.
The municipality's annual report where it details water service delivery seemed to be cut and paste work as figures of what it achieved in four back-to-back financial years from 2015/2016 to 2018/2019 is 100% identical.
According to the report, the number of dwellings with piped water has been on 15,328 since 2015/2016 while the number of those using public taps within 200m or other water supply stood at 7,034 and 1,961 respectively for four years.
Access to water is one of the biggest issues for residents. In one of the most affected areas in the township of Boikhutso which includes Jerusalema and Ext 3, residents rely on a borehole donated recently by AfriSam cement company.
Batsile said he needed to speak to the municipal manager to respond to the claims by the public protector's office that the municipality has refused to co-operate.
Asked if all those listed in the document had the necessary qualifications and were appointed after due processes were followed, Batsile refused to comment.
“If you are asking about the report circulating on social media, we are not going to comment about it because it says it's from the public protector and she has not yet communicated with the municipality with regards to it,” Batsile said.
Asked if Spele had the necessary qualifications to occupy the position of senior manager for water and sanitation, Batsile responded: “Mr Spele was only acting on that position, we have now appointed a permanent manager.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.