THE officials in the administration of the Drakenstein Municipality do not live up to their mandate which is in my opinion to serve the wider public.
Since 2008 I have written numerous letters to this administration pertaining a particular case.
I have written to the Mayor, The Municipal Manager, the Speaker, the directors, the managers and with all of them I experience the same thing, no feedback or a 5 percent reply rate and sometime an automated reply.
In two cases I received a reply after three months.
My problem arose three years ago when I challenged the administration on the application of their procurement policy.
The civil engineering department took it up as a personal fight and from that time on they have gone all lengths in trying to curb us doing business with the Municipality.
This department is transgressing the procurement policy in deliberately delaying payments to our business resulting in us becoming bad debtors because the Municipality does not want to pay us.
The Council accepts a resolution that they will pay historically disadvantaged businesses within seven days after service was rendered, but the officials in the Civil Engineers Department is stopping this from happening.
We have been paid for service only in February 2011 for a service we rendered on 3 September 2010.
We subsequently wrote a letter to the Director Civil Engineering in December 2010 to attend to this matter, but up to this date he has not responded on paper.
I would like to know if this is the normal way the Municipality conduct their business
W Barends (Puncture Shoppe)
May Carolissen, municipal spokesperson, responds: An order was created during February 2010 for payment to Puncture Shoppe for an amount of R176. An electronic payment was created on 30 March 2010 which is in line with our policy, but the EFT payment was rejected by the bank due to incorrect banking details on the same day.
Subsequent to the rejection of the payment, Mr Barends was contacted on numerous occasions to visit the Municipality to change his banking details.
After all these attempts, he promised to come in to provide proof of the banking details in order for the municipal officials to change his details.
There were also attempts made by Supply Chain Management to invite him to come and change his banking details, or accept payment by cheque.
Mr Barends only came to change his banking details on 24 January 2011 after numerous attempts. Thereafter the payments were made to Puncture Shoppe.
