by Athenkosi Plaatjie
The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality head of infrastructure, Mongameli Bobani wants an internal investigation launched into how the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) Nqaba Bhanga was able to hold a meeting with officials from the Metro’s supply-chain department.
According to Bhanga, he had a meeting with officials on Tuesday as a follow up after he received information that there was a shortage of water treatment chemicals.
He released a statement last week Friday with claims that a contract to deliver these chemicals between the Metro and two Port Elizabeth based suppliers had expired in December last year. It was initially extended to June but apparently no action was taken after the extension had lapsed.
In the Statement, he also said this had resulted in the Metro not being able to make full use of water received from the Nooitgedacht Low-Level Water Scheme or the main supply dams.
The Municipality fired back at these claims calling it fake news.
Following Bhanga’s meeting with the supply chain department on Tuesday this week, he said that he was informed that the contract between the Metro and the suppliers ended in December and that a process to renew it was not followed through.
Bhanga claims that at the beginning of August the city manager was asked to sign off the amount from the start of the year as an irregular expenditure instead of doing a deviation which he said would be a legal process.
He added that when this point was reached the Metro was already running out of water treatment chemicals.
Bhanga said writing it off as an irregular expenditure would allow the Metro to keep purchasing the chemicals.
Responding to these allegations, Bobani called Bhanga a liar, stating that the City has had chemicals and there was no problem.
He also called out Bhanga for interfering with the city’s administration processes, adding that he would request the council speaker to launch an investigation into this.
“A councillor that wants any information writes to the speaker and the speaker writes to the city manager and then they get an answer,” Bobani said.
He added that the investigation would look into how Bhanga, who belongs to an opposition party, was able to meet with Metro officials and enquire about tenders.
“This is none of their business, their business is to ensure that residents are getting clean water and that water is clean,” he said.
When Algoa Fm News enquired about the chemicals being purchased and written off as part of the Metro’s irregular expenditure, Bobani said if there was a problem in that regard it would be the city manager’s duty to inform the councillor in charge.
“According to the oversight role I’m playing in the department, everything is fine when it comes to the treatment of the water,” he added.
Algoa FM spoke to Mesti Chem Eastern Cape (pty)Ltd who said that they still have a contract with the Municipality and the company is still providing water treatment chemicals to the Metro.
Another supplier, Abby Labs, declined to comment on the issue.
