City of Tshwane deputy mayor, Dr Nasiphi Moya, has finally paid back a R10 000 travel allowance for a cancelled international trip to Saudi Arabia in 2020 while she was a municipal senior official.
Last month, the EFF called her out during a council meeting for allegedly misappropriating municipal funds while she served as chief of staff under former Mayor Stevens Mokgalapa.
Moya, who doubles as MMC for Community and Social Development Services, recently admitted to receiving the amount, saying it was “a lapse of judgment on my part”.
This week, her political party ActionSA announced that she voluntarily returned the travel allowance on Friday.
ActionSA Gauteng provincial chairperson Funzi Ngobeni said Moya voluntarily paid back the money along with accrued interest of R6 000.
Ngobeni said Moya has been proactive in addressing the matter by offering assistance and expressing her commitment to reimbursing the funds without any prompt from the municipality.
“It is important to note that the aforementioned amount was initially intended as a travel allowance for an official international trip to the Middle East, during the period when Dr Moya served as a member of the staff in the office of the executive mayor,” he said.
Moya, he said, returned the amount in line with her commitment to transparently address the matter and maintain the integrity of her office.
“This demonstrates that ActionSA operates at a higher ethical plane than what is legally required,” Ngobeni said.
He emphasised that it was important to clarify that Moya had no control over the travel arrangements or the subsequent cancellation “thereby dispelling any insinuations suggesting impropriety on the part of the deputy mayor”.
Crucially, Ngobeni said, after the abandoned trip the City did not make any formal request for Moya to pay back the amount “attributed to the standard nature and purpose of a travel allowance advance payment”.
“Despite the City not having requested the return of this amount, Dr Moya has since repaid it in full. Dr Moya had offered to pay interest on this amount, but the city could not accept it, after which Dr Moya accordingly donated the interest to charity. A donation of R6 000 has been made to King’s Hope, a women’s shelter in Olievenhoutbosch,” he said.
Tshwane regional EFF leader Obakeng Ramabodu questioned Moya’s ethical morals and behaviour after it emerged that she didn’t return the travel allowance after the trip was subsequently called off.
Moya recently said the allowance was paid into her account a week before she pulled out of the trip.
“Now during that time obviously there was a lot of chaos in the city and there was a lapse of judgment on my part. The City also obviously never followed up and so there was never a refusal to return the money,” she said.
Pretoria News
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