Member of parliament, Audrey Maleka is being haunted by a dark past involving a ghost municipal salary she received while she was also getting paid as secretary of the ANC in the Gert Sibande region.
Leaked documents show that she continued to receive a full year’s salary from the Msukaligwa local municipality in Ermelo despite having another salary in the ANC.
Maleka left the position of regional secretary to her deputy Lindi Masina soon after she was elected as a member of Parliament in the 2019 national government elections.
The ANC wants its elected secretaries to focus on the office and not take any position in the state, which is the reason why Maleka was asked to resign as ANC regional secretary when she assumed the role of a member of Parliament in May 2019.
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Sources at the municipality said Maleka never came to the office yet received her full HR manager’s salary since her election as a regional secretary in September 2016.
“The matter raised eyebrows in mid-2017 when the municipality was doing its employee verification checklist and it was discovered that a Ms Audrey Maleka was in the municipal employee database. And was employed as an HR manager despite not coming to the HR manager’s office,” one whistleblower told the 013NEWS reporter.
“We never had an HR manager, that is known, and we were shocked when we saw her signature that she was our HR manager,” the source said, referring to Maleka’s signature on 15 August 2017 confirming her employment with the municipality.
013NEWS also saw paper trails of money paid by the municipality in October 2016 – a month after she became ANC secretary – for Maleka’s education at Wits University.
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The documents show the municipality paid R48 500 for Maleka’s short course at the Wits Business School.
Insiders understand the salary of an ANC Gert Sibande secretary to be around R40 000 and the salary of an HR manager to be around the same figure, meaning Maleka took double salaries home.
When asked for comment this week, Maleka refused to comment and redirected questions to municipal spokesperson Mandla Zwane who promised to comment but never did.
“I will revert back to you with the responses in due course. I have to verify the information and unfortunately, the offices are now closed,” Zwane said.
The Msukaligwa municipality is one of South Africa’s worst run municipalities, mentioned in this year’s Auditor-General reports as being the country’s top 10 contributors to fruitless and wasteful expenditure – along with Govan Mbeki, Lekwa and eMalahleni.
Sources say they are putting together documents in order to lay a charge of fraud against Maleka.
(edited by ZK)
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