The City of Tshwane (CoT) is believed to have hired a private company to manage Wonderboom Airport in contravention of City procurement rules and policies.
Wonderboom Airport is owned by the City that holds the airport licence from the SA Civil Aviation Authority and is deemed to be an asset of the City.
In terms of the licence and the Civil Aviation Regulations, a senior person – an individual – must be appointed as the accountable manager or compliance officer.
Instead, the City hired a private company in 2017 to manage the airport and who then appointed one of their own employees as the airport manager. The licence conditions were not amended to allow for this.
The appointment of a private company to manage the airport was made in November 2017, however, the appointment was subject to the drafting and signing by both parties of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) before any work could commence. The private company commenced its work in November 2017 but the SLA was only signed by both parties six months later, in June 2018. The Auditor General’s (AG) report on the CoT shows that all payments from November 2017 to June 2018 was classified as irregular expenditure.
This contributed to the AG’s finding of the CoT’s R5 billion irregular expenditure in its most recent financial audit report.
In April of 2019, OUTA was provided with information pertaining to various irregularities that had taken place at Wonderboom National Airport (WBA), the main concern being the irregular appointment of Professional Aviation Services (PAS) by the City of Tshwane (CoT) to manage operations at WBA.
The investigation focused on the irregular appointment of PAS, until in quick succession, PAS had announced that they had given notice to terminate their contact with CoT. Shortly thereafter the then Mayor of CoT, Stephens Mokgolapa, announced that a company known as Ntiyiso Consulting had been appointed to take over the management of operations at WBA from PAS. With the new appointment, OUTA turned its focus to the appointment of Ntyiso Consulting.
In March of 2020, the Wonderboom Airport Interest Group (WAIG), instituted court proceedings against CoT regarding the appointment of Ntyiso consulting. The court found in favour of WAIG and set aside the appointment.
OUTA’s investigation into the matter uncovered multiple acts of fraud, corruption and maladministration tormenting WBA and also found that the CoT deployed an Investigative Task team (as far back as 2017) to investigate these irregularities at WBA. The Task team submitted various investigative reports to the CoT but to date none of them have been actioned.
In November 2019 OUTA wrote a letter to the CoT, calling for engagement on the issue of the PAS appointment, available here.
In July 2020 OUTA wrote a letter to the CoT, enquiring about the Investigative reports submitted to the CoT by their own Investigative team and the status of implementation thereof, available here.
OUTA sent a further letter to the CoT in August 2020, following up as no answer was received regarding the Investigative reports already submitted, available here.
OUTA also submitted a PAIA Application, calling for the CoT to provide OUTA with further information;
Due to the woes encountered by CoT management during the last couple of years, OUTA could not have meaningful engagement with the city on the WBA issue but in January 2021 OUTA engaged with the newly appointed Executive Management team and re-submitted the letters and PAIA Application.
OUTA will continue to apply pressure on the CoT to resolve the issues identified at the WBA and to ultimately hold those responsible for the fraud, corruption and maladministration accountable.
