The Makhado mayor, Cllr Glory Mashaba, vehemently denied interfering with the municipality’s administrative processes this week.

This follows allegations made by local DA councillor Jacques Smalle in a press statement that Mashaba and a fellow councillor, Cllr TJ Mudau, had interfered with the municipality’s administrative process with regard to the appointment of human resources within the municipality. The Municipal Systems Act clearly states that such interferences are unlawful.

“The local municipality advertised 64 posts at a cost of R300 000 in December 2007. On July 17 this year, the two councillors took it upon themselves to stop the process with no explanation to Council or even discussing the issue with Council,” Smalle says in his statement. He goes on to say that the municipality had budgeted for 100 human resource positions. Presently, Smalle says, there are 155 vacancies of which 55 are critical. Most of these positions are in the municipality’s by-now-somewhat-chaotic finance department.

“If we do not fill these posts with the correct staff as a matter of urgency, the municipality will once again fail when trying to give efficient service delivery,” says Smalle. He says that the DA will address this issue of fruitless expenditure with the Public Protector to demand that the two councillors repay the R300 000 to the municipality. Furthermore, Smalle says, they will submit a motion to Council, requesting the two councillors to step down from their positions.

In response to the allegations, municipal spokesperson Mr Louis Bobodi did not want to elaborate on Tuesday on the allegations that the mayor and Cllr Mudau had stopped the process, merely stating that “the shortlisting is going on as we speak”.

“I am not saying it did or did not happened, but it did not come to my attention,” Bobodi said. He then referred any further questions to the mayor herself.

In a telephonic interview with Mashaba, who was busy preparing for an overseas trip on behalf of the municipality, she categorically denied the allegations.

“I do not have the power to stop administrative processes,” Mashaba said. She denied stopping the process and said that the DA’s allegations were totally unfounded.

“In fact, I was doing a follow-up, asking why we are not making appointments when we’ve got serious problems specifically in critical departments such as finance and technical services,” Mashaba said.

The DA’s latest press statement clearly upset Mashaba.

“My problem with the DA is that they are always relying on allegations. They had written a letter to the MEC for Local Government and Housing, making a recommendation that we must be fired, based on allegations. They know the protocol. Why don’t they come to my office … why do they choose to go to the media?” Mashaba asked.