Pay back the money: Court orders Nelson Mandela Bay ex-officials to repay R7m

John Perlman interviews Kevin Allan, Managing Director of Municipal IQ.

Listen below.

Municipal officials can be held financially accountable for unauthorised, irregular, fruitless, and wasteful expenditure, according to a ruling handed down by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) last week.

This landmark decision has significant implications for municipalities, particularly for the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, where it paves the way for recovering multimillion-rand claims related to the Integrated Public Transport System (IPTS) project.

As a result of this ruling, seven former senior managers at the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality are now liable to repay over R7 million due to their accountability for irregular expenditure.

Allan commends this development as a crucial step towards fostering greater accountability among municipal officials.

"For our local government officials; if you're handling a lot of money, you really have a grave responsibility to be careful with that money and how you spend it."

- Kevin Allan, Managing Director – Municipal IQ

Among the seven individuals facing financial accountability are a former city manager, a former executive director for public health who also served as acting city manager, and the former executive director for infrastructure and engineering.

Given their high-ranking positions, both Perlman and Allan contend that requiring these officials to repay the funds may be considered a relatively lenient consequence for their actions, suggesting that they were aware of their actions.

'It's very clear from what I can see from this case that people were acting in a very cynical way."

- Kevin Allan, Managing Director – Municipal IQ

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