East London - The Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality will not tolerate corruption within the municipality and will scrutinise every tender issued to avoid incompetent service providers from benefiting.
Acting Metro Municipal Manager Andile Fani, appointed in November last year, said he was not scared of corrupt individuals that will try their utmost to stop him from restoring order in the Metro's supply chain management system.
"The most important people to me are those people waiting for us to deliver services. An individual won't stop me from achieving my goal to provide services to those that need it," said Fani.
Fani said the Metro has put a number of systems in place to prevent the irregular awarding of tenders, including installing cameras in the supply chain office and restricting access to the office with a thumbprint reader.
Tender committee procedures have also been revised and some tenders, which were found to be awarded irregularly, have been terminated.
He said the Ernst and Young report into corruption and maladministration in the municipality would be made public after it had been put before council.
"I believe that corruption seriously affects service delivery. Municipal employees now know that there are ground rules in place. They will be caught and dealt with," said Fani.
He said he hoped to leave behind a legacy of corruption-free governance at the Metro when his term as acting municipal manager comes to an end.
Another challenge the acting Municipal Manager is hoping to tackle is repairing ailing infrastructure and ensuring residents live in a clean city. Fani acknowledged that the city's infrastructure was old, but he was intent on rectifying the situation.
The Metro is currently working on a project that will see Buffalo City residents being able to phone in and report potholes.
This would be accomplished by good micro-management and coming in to work at 4am to see what has been done and what still needs to be achieved.
When asked why he would not take up the position of city manager permanently, Fani said there were better people than him who could do the job even better.
"I want to give someone else the opportunity to do the job. I just hope that when I leave here in January, the good things I have done here are not thrown out the window," concluded Fani.
