SIU report into Ratlou Municipality to be tabled before council

The North West provincial government authorities have made an undertaking that the report by the Special Investigating Unit ( SIU) into allegations of fraud and corruption in the Ratlou Local Municipality based at Setlagole, will be tabled before council for deliberation and implementation.

This is as the SIU has finalised and submitted its report.

The unit probed allegations of fraud and corruption in the awarding of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) tenders. The SIU probe at the municipality started after a whistleblower reported alledged fraud and corruption that took place when tenders were awarded for the procurement of PPE.

It is alleged that a senior official from the municipality instructed officials to appoint service providers who were related to that official. Elements of price inflation were also reported. However, since the report has been tabled last year, the previous council was unable to sit and debate the report.

It is alleged that some African National Congress councillors connived with implicated officials to ensure the council does not sit to adopt the report.

The SIU says 62% of the contracts it has so far investigated have been found to be irregular:

The current chairperson for the Ratlou Municipal Public Accounts Committee, Godsend Mokgope, says they have requested the intervention of the provincial government.

“My concern is centered around the SIU report which was supposed to be tabled in Ratlou Local Municipality in a special council meeting but that has never happened. I have written a letter to the MEC Ms. Lena Miga so that she must intervene in this regard.”

The ANC in the province is equally concerned about the non-implementation of the SIU report.

” There is a report of the SIU which we believe that the ANC majority they will respect that and they will make sure that that report finds expression in council and they then follow what the SIU has recommended. Again is a matter that we will have to deal with because this element of disregarding such reports in the province, in fact, is prevailing we have seen it before,” says Coordinator for the ANC Interim Provincial Committee, Hlomani Chauke.

The provincial government says it will ensure that by next week, the report is tabled before the council.

“We now have to present before the council that this is the outcome of the report so that then the council must then take a resolution moving forward. Now we will be meeting Ratlou Municipality around that with the view that Ratlou would have to present that report before the new council because they are a new leadership and then they must then be able to act on that report,” says MEC for Local Government, Lena Miga. 

Ratlou municipal speaker, Gloria Leepo, says they will comply.

” We are going to sit down as a collective and go through it and we don’t have a problem doing what we need to do as the municipality because as the president said, we don’t want corruption. So we are going to do everything about that.”

It is expected that after the tabling of the report, the council will then deliberate on the matter and recommendations implemented to the letter.