News24 Business reports that Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke has, for the first time, used her expanded powers to issue a Certificate of Debt (COD) that makes a municipal manager personally liable for millions of rands of losses in overpayment.
The certificate holds the accounting officer and municipal manager of the Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality, Allan Losaba, personally liable to repay R4.6 million. The municipality, in the North West, includes the town of Mahikeng. The municipality’s mayor has been told to see to it that the manager pays. The AG’s office expects regular updates, with the first of these due at the end of December. Losaba has been the municipality’s manager and accounting officer since 2019, earning around R1.8 million a year.
Maluleke said the case against Losaba dated back to the 2018-19 audit cycle, when her office first picked up evidence of overpayment to a service provider who was rendering water tanker services. Her office then issued recommendations, which were not acted on, and later, binding remedial action, which was again ignored. Before issuing the certificate, the accounting officer was invited to provide reasons for his failure to implement the remedial action. The responses were then considered by an independent panel, which later gave Maluleke the go-ahead to issue the COD.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Jan Cronje at News24 Business (subscription / trial registration required)
- Read too, Municipal manager personally liable for over R4m after AG issues certificate of debt, at BusinessDay (subscriber access only)
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