Can you believe it?

The Witness: "Waste of funds"
16 Dec 2008
The Editor MSUNDUZI Municipality ratepayers will have read with astonishment of the sums of money spent on providing official transport for Deputy Mayor Mervin Dirks over the past two years. In 2006 NPC 2 was damaged in some unspecified way in a storm at Panorama Gardens. Whether it was there legitimately is also unknown; it had not ferried the deputy mayor but had been taken by his bodyguards. Assuming, however, that it might have been hail damage that was sustained, the vehicle should surely have been fixed in a matter of weeks and the costs covered by insurance, with a replacement vehicle hired in the interim. Instead, some R700 000 has been spent over the past two years in hiring cars for Dirks at a cost of about R1 000 per day. Two weeks ago, the municipality took delivery of a new NPC 2, a Mercedes Benz C220, but the hire car has not yet been returned. What has happened to the previous NPC 2 remains a mystery.Hard-pressed ratepayers are surely due some explanation of what at the very best seems an extraordinarily casual use of official funds.