Toxic Palapye Council Relations Reach PS
Koketso Kgoboge | Monday June 22, 2020 16:41
The petition, signed by all the 28 sub-district council councillors including the council chairperson, Khumoyame Lekoko, was sent to the PS last Thursday.
“This serves to inform your office to the fact that there is no good working relationship with the SACS of Palapye Administration Authority (Mr Lucky Maoto).”
“The Sub District wishes to request your indulgence in the matter as this interferes with government development in the district,” the petition reads in part. On Friday, Maoto said he had come across the letter and was made aware that there was a petition. He denied any toxic relations amongst the civil service employees, the political wing and himself.
Lerala councillor, Tiro Keorapetse said they were inclined to seek assistance from the PS as they reckoned SACS undermined the council standing orders.
He said the council was left hanging as SACS and other civil servants abandoned its due processes of closure. He said the councillors converged at Majestic hotel on Thursday where the council was held only to find an empty hall. “We were surprised to find the civil servants wereabsent and had taken everything. They had also instructed the hotel to clean the hall, without notifying us,” he said.
Keorapetse said the frictions were clear from the onset with disagreements on venues. SACS had prepared a community hall venue that the councillors turned down and went to Majestic.
The Lerala councillor said since then the standing orders were ignored and the council ran in circles.
He said the reports, particularly that of the coronavirus (COVID-19) they were looking for, were not presented.
“Nothing progressive has happened at the council meeting in the days we spent there. We were surprised that the COVID-19 report that we felt smelt of corruption, which failed to reach the council was presented to the Vice President (Slumber Tsogwane) at the Kgotla,” Keorapetse said.
Jordan Makhura of Morupule Ward echoed similar sentiments.
“We cannot have SACS and civil servants pulling that way and councillors pulling a different direction,” Makhura said.
He also bemoaned lack of reports and said they turned down a ‘half-baked COVID-19 report’ and wanted all the details as they felt tendering and awarding of food hampers was questionable.
He said the report must show how much the government awarded the sub-council, how much was received in contributions and how much was spent.
“Not that half-baked report. We also want to know how much was the cost of the shoddy jobs in our schools.
Those are questions we should answer to, to our communities,” Makhura added.
He also complained SACS and his team overlooked the councillors when handling the COVID-19 processes during the lockdown.
“Councillors are ex-officio members of the VDC (Village Development Committees), but we hear they got the names of the companies from VDC registers and we don’t know. It is not true. We want to know about these companies.”
Maoto denied they left the political wing out. He said their COVID-19 task team was inclusive of the council chairperson as representative of the councillors and a representative of the office of the Member of the Parliament.
Contrary to the councillors’ comments, Maoto said all the reports were delivered to the sub-council. He said they could not bring all heads of departments to the council due to social distancing protocols, but they ensured all the questions were answered.
“We brought reports and answered the questions, and the issue here could be those were not adequate, but that it is not anything new. Usually when councillors are not satisfied, they make follow-ups, and we find them more clarity.”
“Of course I have been called about the issue of a breakdown that I was not aware of by the council committees and I thought it was addressed.
I thought it was just confusion borne of working in a very sensitive situation of COVID-19 where things need to be done promptly,” he said.
When quizzed on a hanging council saying, “The council was supposed to close on Tuesday, but because of the other item that was left behind, we pushed it to Wednesday, which was the last day”.