Rehoboth mayor demands financial statements

JEMIMA BEUKES WINDHOEKRehoboth mayor Rudie van Wyk has questioned why the town council has more than 10 banking accounts, saying it makes it difficult for the management committee to monitor and control expenditure.This after the committee discovered million-dollar discrepancies regarding the council’s financials.Committee chair Amanda Groenewald asked financial manager Zeino Theron to explain the origin of an internal transfer to the tune of about N$9 million.Theron said this was a “mistake” that he will soon correct.“I believe this is just wrongly allocated, but I will have a look at it and correct it on the internal transfer site from Standard Bank and First National Bank [FNB],” he said.Theron was also asked to explain a N$4.3 million rent payment, to which he responded that his mind is “foggy”.Open up the booksVan Wyk demanded viewing rights of the council’s financial statements, including its banking account details.“We have viewing rights now for six accounts, we still need five more accounts because we have 11 accounts in total. The bottom line is that the management committee wants to know exactly what we are managing and when we can say yes or no. We also want to know what the true state of affairs is here,” Van Wyk said.According to Rehoboth CEO Simeon Kanime, the town’s day-to-day financial transactions are done through FNB and they don’t have access to the bank account they hold with Standard Bank.“What we normally do, if we want funds from them, we just write to the bank to transfer funds to our FNB account so that we can do a transaction. So, we do not have access to those accounts,” he said, adding that they get statements on request.‘Not normal’To this, councillor Joey Hammerslacht said it is “not normal” to hold banking accounts and not be granted viewing rights.Theron responded that these transactional banking accounts were in existence when they took over.“Some of the residents have Standard Bank accounts and they would prefer to do their transactions there and on my in-contact I also receive a Standard Bank [notification]. Standard Bank we receive a statement every single day and also [on] a monthly basis,” he said.He added that there is a resolution that they should use only one bank and because they do not want to close this account, they use it transfer funds into the FNB account.“Those statements can be provided to the management committee either on a weekly or bi-monthly basis,” he said. jemima@namibiansun.com

Rehoboth mayor demands financial statements

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Namibian Sun 2025-07-01

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Rehoboth mayor demands financial statements

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Namibian Sun 2025-07-01

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