DEAR MINISTER OF urban and rural development, after various press reports and a public statement of the chief executive officer (CEO) of the municipality of Grootfontein about the chaotic and appalling state of affairs at the town in September 2020, you promised in the press to find solutions to this.
One of the excuses for your overdue promise to intervene in all the maladministration was that a ministerial team in 2018 was investigating the matter.
Unfortunately you and the town’s residents are still awaiting a report and solutions.
Your two predecessors and your long-time executive director, Ngidinua Daniel, were, as you are, aware that your public service charter excludes your ministry from any responsibility in the custodianship for local authorities.
Your ministry for a decade ignored all our correspondence on the maladministration at Grootfontein’s municipality and other local authorities.
In your ministry’s public service charter is written that local and regional authorities are expected to develop or have their own charters.
This has never happened and is the overall reason why the decentralisation left a wide gap and invited the chaos as described by the town’s CEO.
On 29 January this year the incoming elected councillors received an invitation for an induction to their task about 70 days after election only.
The invitation was signed by the same executive director who, with his team, has not cared about the maladministration of Grootfontein for years.
Residents of the town have still not received any information from the incoming councillors, except that on 28 January the first town council meeting should have taken place.
The meeting was cancelled on short notice – like previously.
Additionally, a letter to the councillors was lost for 12 days before it was found in a file of the secretary.
Maladministration continues as always.
Minister Uutoni, in the new administration we want accountability and transparency!
Uwe Rathmann
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