Johannesburg’s Department of Development Planning has suspended three officials for alleged maladministration.

The city said the officials had been suspended pending further investigation for refusing to co-operate with the city’s Group Risk and Assurance Services (GRAS) as part of the audits being conducted following the storms which ravaged parts of the city on December 30 last year.

More than 3‚000 houses were damaged in the storms‚ which left two people dead.

Following the storms‚ Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba committed to launch an investigation to determine whether construction at the worst affected homes was up to the appropriate standard.

“GRAS was mandated to audit all processes followed for the construction of new houses; and the Department of Development Planning’s Building Development Management Unit were one of the departments being audited as part of this process. “Unfortunately‚ a few seemingly corrupt officials from the Department in Region D were refusing to provide the necessary files with information about damaged houses to the auditors. “They were subsequently suspended‚” Mashaba said on Wednesday.

He said a preliminary report as part of the ongoing investigation indicated that irregular building approvals‚ missing files for various developments‚ a complete breakdown of governance processes and maladministration took place while the suspended officials were in office.

“I have been assured that the department is reviewing standard operation procedures for Building Development Management (BDM)‚ filing within regions‚ and strengthening controls for greater accountability and transparency‚” Mashaba added.