We all had our suspicions, but it’s now been confirmed. Evidence from the eThekwini Municipality conclusively reveals that the collapsed mall in Tongaat had been built illegally.

Jay Singh, a well-connected property developer and millionaire, started construction on the 16000m² without proper permission.

The municipality issued Singh with a court order to halt construction – which he ignored. Worse still, the municipality was well aware of Singh’s transgressions, but failed to send police to stop him. It has also been revealed that the construction workers on site were not registered with the Labour Department.

“The site could not be policed 24-hours a day,” city manager Sibusiso Sithole said yesterday.

James Nxumalo, the mayor of Durban, claimed that he and his officials had “done all they could to stop him.”

We were in the process of applying for a contempt of court warrant after we discovered that the owners were ignoring a November 14 court order to stop work. The municipality has no relationship with the owners.

Facts about Singh’s past involvement with the government tell another story, though.

Singh used to own the city’s bus company, Remant Alton, until it went under three years ago. He still secured a massive profit though, when the municipality bailed him out and bought it back from him for R403 million.

He had bought it for R70 million initially.

It doesn’t stop there. Singh’s wife owned Gralio Precast, an engineering company that was awarded with a R70 million tender to build the first phase of Cornubia, a multi-billion housing project near Umhlanga. This comes despite numerous court applications over shoddy workmanship by the owners of low-cost houses that Gralio Precast built.

His wife, Shireen Annamalay, also went to court to stop the municipality from awarding the second phase of the development to another company.

In other words, Mr. Singh and his wife are as bent as the soviet sickle, and as hard as the hammer that crosses it.

[Source : Times Live]