COGTA Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize welcomes court intervention as the department seeks to recover funds
The Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Dr Zwelini Mkhize, has welcomed the court decision granted in favour of the Department of Cooperative Governance in its quest to recover funds that were erroneously transferred.
In July and August this year, the Department erroneously transferred a total of R183 450 000.00 to the Greater Sekhukhune Region Cooperative Ltd instead of the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality. When the error was discovered, the department engaged the Cooperative as well as the tranferring banks to reverse the payments. Unfortunately, a total of R102 990 638.19 has still not been returned.
The North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria granted an interim order in favour of the department and the order interdicts the Greater Sekhukhune Region Cooperative from dispensing with the money that they hold in different accounts.
Minister Mkhize has instructed the Director General of the Department of Cooperative Governance to launch an investigation into how this error occurred and institute the necessary corrective actions especially since this is not the first time that such an error has occurred. In the other incident also in August, the department paid Mahikeng Municipality double its share of R60-million and struggled in recovering the money.
The failure to payback the money by the Greater Sekhukhune Region Cooperative resulted in the department launching an urgent interdict to recover the money.
“We are happy that the court has ruled in our favour in this matter. Importantly going forward, this means that we need to increase capacity and ensure that such mistakes to not recur. I have instructed the DG to launch the necessary investigation and explore ways to improve our payment systems and also to ensure that action is taken against anyone responsible for wrongdoing. This is totally unacceptable,” said Dr Mkhize.
Enquiries:
Musa Zondi
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