The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube Municipal Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council is reportedly being defrauded of thousands of dollars by its workers who are taking advantage of the local authority’s lax security to get away with varied amounts.
According to a confidential council report, the council’s audit team has uncovered one of the defrauding scams, amid fears that more of such cases could be going undetected due to lack of monitoring mechanisms.
In the said instance, the local authority lost $2 062 to a senior clerical assistant based at Richmond Landfill site, identified as Mr M Mathuthu. The senior clerical assistant was charged with collecting money from companies who came to dump their waste at the site.
Council, however, noted that the figure could be more as there were some receipt books that were missing with security personnel at the site acknowledging that they did not have a hands-on approach to the running of the site.
The scam was unearthed when the council replaced Mr Mathuthu with a new clerical assistant to take over the collection.
“Receipting is done by the senior clerical assistant with charges varying according to the quantity. The minimum charge is $9 per cubic metre for a non-tipper and $7 for a tipper and quantity is ascertained by the senior clerical assistant through assessment.
“The investigation came to being after the acting accountant noticed variances on the monies banked by the new senior clerical assistant assigned to the site, raising suspicions that the previous senior clerical assistant (Mr Mathuthu) could have misappropriated council funds,” reads the council report.
The investigations further revealed some of the companies receipted did not even exist.
“Audit noted that there was a significant change in the cash collected and banked between the period February 2009 to November 2011, the time Mr Mathuthu was stationed at the landfill site, and December 2011 to February 2012 when a new clerical assistant was assigned to the site.
“The cash collected and banked increased from an average of $200 per day to between $400 and $1 000 per day though tipping charges had not increased. An amount of $2 062 collected by Mr Mathuthu was not submitted to council, Mr Mathuthu received cash and recorded different amounts for the same receipts, that is, the top copy and the duplicate copy, he issued clients a receipt with the correct amount tendered and then recorded a lesser fee on the office copy thereby pocketing the difference,” reads the report.
The local authority is failing to locate Mr Mathuthu, who has since resigned from council employ, thereby frustrating efforts to investigate and bring him to book.
