Tiff over new municipal directors
2008-04-10
May Saal
THE Drakenstein Municipal Council approved the appointment of five executive directors last week at a special council meeting, in spite of the fact that the DA, ID, WCC and ACDP left the meeting due to “the illegal process” that was followed. The five executive directors’ posts have been newly created to oversee the five departments at the municipality. The new directors are Leon Coetzee (currently acting head of the engineering department) for infrastructure, Cavin Petersen (currently acting head) for finance, Tommy Matthee (currently acting head) for social services, Lulama Sinzani from Pretoria for corporate services, and Pravine Naidoo (municipal manager of Grahamstown) for strategic planning. The executive directors will report for duty on 1 May. According to the Drakenstein Mayor, Charmaine Manuel, the new macrostructure of the Municipality has never been addressed since the amalgamation of Paarl with Wellington and Saron. “This matter was compounded when the Heads of Departments left the service of Drakenstein Municipality in 2004. Since 2004 we had acting HOD’s for most departments,” said Manuel. Last year Drakenstein appointed a multiparty committee to investigate and make recommendations to Council on a new macrostructure for the organisation. The committee comprised of representatives of the ANC, DA, ID, WCC and ACDP who decided to engage the services of consultants to assist the committee with its work. “The consultants had various meetings and engagements with all stakeholders including parties on council, management and trade unions. They submitted their report to Council, which report was adopted with a few changes,” said Manuel. At a Council meeting held on 25 October last year, the mayoral committee was mandated to facilitate the process of selection and interviews and to make final recommendation to Council. The Municipal Manager took charge of the advertisment process and working on the job descriptions. The mayoral committee’s recommendation served before Council on 3 April, where it was resolved who would be apointed as Executive Directors. The DA submitted a document to council where they requested that Council not go ahead with the meeting because the process was illegal and that the DA had the right to take this matter to the High Court should the appointment of the directors go ahead. According to the DA and other opposition parties, the mayoral committee followed an illegal process by not inviting the opposition parties to share in the selection process. They had withdrawn from the special meeting to discuss the appointments two weeks ago, and had decided not to attend the meeting on Thursday where the appointments were finalised, because they had not been privy to all the applications. The ID also submitted a motion of no confidence in the mayoral committee. Their motivation for their motion was that the mayor “does not act on the fact that some mayoral council members neglect their duties”. The ID requested that the mayor with her mayoral committee should therefore vacate their positions.
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