Concerns were raised about the amount of money that was claimed by one of the service providers that was collecting waste in eThekwini.
This was heard by the Durban High Court on Wednesday in a fraud and corruption trial involving Zandile Gumede, the former mayor of the eThekwini Municipality.
Gumede and 21 others are on trial for conspiracy to commit corruption, fraud, money laundering, racketeering, and contravention of the Municipal Finance Management Act and the Municipal Systems Act, relating to a R300 million Durban Solid Waste (DSW) tender.
A State witness, who is a contract administrator in the municipality, said she received an email from the fourth accused, Allan Robert Abbu, who was deputy head of DSW within the municipality.
Abbu asked her to look at the issue of the payment of two service providers with urgency. The witness, who we cannot name as per court order, said she looked at the thread of emails that were included in her email from Abbu and highlighted two things from them.
Before that, she presented the court with a series of emails dated February 2018 in which officials from the Finance Department, among others, expressed concerns over funds on a service provider's account for waste collection that had not been paid in 2018.
In addition to the R122 000, R5 million had been claimed. One official expressed his inability to comprehend how R5 million was obtained.
Senior city officials, including those from the Finance Department, expressed concerns in this email thread over the R5 million and R122 000 included in the Elshaddai Holdings Group Cc invoice.
“A letter of award had two components, a fixed charge of R122 000 per month and a variable charge of R800 per cubic meter. Has this been taken into account?” an accountant had asked.
These escalated to Abbu, who said the areas were incorrectly grouped from their side.
“However, to ensure service delivery operations were implemented, the tenderers, as well as the municipal operations staff, were informed. This was tabled by the chair trading services with the city manager, and on my return, I also informed the city manager accordingly,” he said.
Abbu had been on leave. He further said that during the service implementation, the contractors were instructed to service areas other than those tabled. He said a clean-up was implemented to the CBD during the EPWP strike, cleaning of the M25 during the visit of the top six from national and wards 52,53,57 and Cornubia 102.
“All of these tenders have incurred additional costs as they paid all the staff by raising their funds to prevent strikes and work stoppages,” he said.
He also explained that the waste collection project was made up of four contractors, and two of them, Ilanga La Mahlalse Projects and Uzuzinekela Trading, had been paid. Omphile Thabang CC and Elshaddai had not been paid.
Moreover, the witness said what was needed was compliance checks and amendments to the Bid Adjudication Committee (BAC) report recommendations. She said she asked Abbu to tell her what needed to be done.
The State concluded its case, and the defence would start with the cross-examination on Thursday.