Qgeberha<\/p>\n
By Joseph Chirume.<\/p>\n
A recent suspicious flooding at Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality\u2019s Budget&Treasury offices has left residents hot under the collar after important documents were damaged.<\/p>\n
What raises the ire of Nelson Mandela Bay ratepayers is that the flooding only targeted documents that were needed by the auditor-general for auditing that is currently underway.<\/p>\n
The incident prompted the Executive Mayor, Cllr Babalwa Lobishe to open a criminal case at Humewood Police Station.<\/p>\n
Cllr Lobishe was accompanied to the police station by her deputy, Cllr Gary van Niekerk and Acting City Manager,Adv Lonwabo Ngoqo. The incident has raffled feathers in the corridors of power at the City Hall as suspicion gathers momentum pointing fingers at suspected sabotage by syndicates who are allegedly trying to destroy criminal evidence contained in the documents.<\/p>\n
The Municipality said in a statement, \u201cThis action stems from the 18 November flooding of the office \u2014 the very place where your city\u2019s most important financial and service-delivery records are kept \u2014 at a time when an official audit was under way. Such an event has serious implications for how the Municipality safeguards public information and upholds transparent governance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Executive Mayor reassured residents that the Municipality is taking this matter extremely seriously. By opening a case and initiating a full investigation, the leadership is making it clear: your trust, your services, and your city\u2019s financial integrity come first. Any wrongdoing, negligence, or interference will be uncovered and acted upon without fear or favour.\u201d<\/p>\n
This incident has left residents fuming as they demand an urgent investigation arguing that the timing of the flooding could not be an accident given that the documents were needed for a scrutiny by the auditor-general.<\/p>\n
Some residents are blaming the municipality for relying on an out -dated system of paperwork instead of embracing modern technology in the form of digitalisation.<\/p>\n
Venting his anger on the NMB Facebook page is resident Francois Van Zyl who said, \u201cSo many questions arise from storage of documents in one place that goes missing. Back-ups, fireproof safe for storage of backups or secure off-site storage, policies in case of disaster, what management is applied, legal compliance and so the list goes on. Surely no audits are done or complied with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another resident Denise Gilchrist-Hattingh weighed in, \u201cWhat case was opened when you are the reason for lack of maintenance. Also strange this happened during an official audit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Angela Sandells adds, \u201cThat important \u2018paperwork\u2019 should have been scanned and stored on a network.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thombela Chiya Wohlanga gets blunt with facts, \u201cBut you don\u2019t need (an) audit. It\u2019s a waste of time because even that flooding was deliberate. You just want to fool the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NMB statement concluded by saying, \u201cOur commitment is simple \u2014 to protect your interests, strengthen our institutions, and ensure that every action taken within the Municipality stands up to public scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Qgeberha By Joseph Chirume. A recent suspicious flooding at Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality\u2019s Budget&Treasury offices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":808,"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions\/808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecmessenger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}