IPC spokesperson, Oupa Khoabane, says both political and administrative leadership has failed to perform due diligence at the municipality. 

This is as the municipality is yet to pay its workers after more than 50 days since the Free State High Court order which attached the municipal’s account for failure to pay municipal pension fund contributions since 2012, running into a R26 million debt. Khoabane says the matter has been handed over to the legislature and governance subcommittee to deal with and make an assessment of the level of cooperative governance at the municipality.

"It has become very clear that part of the problem the municipality has been having is the problem of leadership and the legislature and governance subcommittee has been assigned a task to make that assessment and bring a report so that we can see, as the ANC, how do we assist the institution to deal with the challenges that they are having. Because clearly, the debt owed to workers’ pension funds is increasing instead of going down,” he adds.

Asked if heads should roll at the municipality Khoabane said the ANC cannot micromanage issues of the municipality.

He says when the ANC makes the pronouncement of intervention where possible it’s based on a true reflection of what happens at the institution itself so that we don’t thumb suck because in the past the ANC has tried to do several interventions of sending people to assist.

OFM News has previously reported that workers of the Municipality's financial woes are far from over as the workers are yet to be paid after nearly two months.

The municipal spokesperson, Solly Phama, confirmed to OFM News that it has been more than 54 days today (Wednesday) since workers, including general workers and officials, have been paid in August 2021. Phama said the Municipal Account was attached with funds available to pay salaries and carry out basic service delivery.

OFM News