The Democratic Alliance in Msunduzi today calls on KwaZulu-Natal Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC, Sipho Hlomuka to invoke section 139 (1) (c) in the municipality, following shocking revelations regarding the 2019/20 draft annual financial statement.
The report indicates that even under administration the municipality has gone from bad to worse.
The report revealed that the municipality only managed to collect R5, 7 billion, R552 million less than the original budget. It is not surprising that Msunduzi under collected by 66% as many households enjoy free municipal services, in particular water and electricity, this was revealed during the former Ministerial Representative’s Revenue Stats workshop.
During 2020/21 budget, in the middle of the provincial intervention, in the presence of the Ministerial Representative, Scelo Duma, again Msunduzi took a strange decision where under “Fines, Penalties and Forfeits” they budgeted only R1, 8 million in collections even though they had managed to collect R13.2 million for 2019/20.
While Msunduzi failed to meet its collection obligation, on the other hand, the Ministerial Report titled “Msunduzi Report Card 2019/20, slide 52 “Security Matter –Councillor Security, revealed that between July 2019 and June 2020 Msunduzi spent R102 million, above the alarming figure. This is highly irregular since the allocation of Councillor’s security has to follow a legal procedure which must be influenced by “Life Threat Assessment” outcomes from SAPS and formally approved by Council which was never the case at Msunduzi.
For the R2, 4 billion spent on Bulk Purchases for communities, the municipality cannot convert that money into revenue due to the 66% of people who do not pay for municipal services. We have at many times, made proposals to the municipality on how they can better track and ensure that everyone is paying for their services but our calls have been ignored.
In addition to this, the municipality has only managed to register 5100 indigent customers whereas we have 35000. This negatively affects the Equitable Share Grant, as the National Treasury can only allocate funds for those registered. The municipality ultimately has to fund this from its own revenue.
Instead of implementing workable strategies to turn the municipal finances around, the administrator has seemingly placed the burden on residents instead of bringing to book all the officials who have pending corruption cases against them.
Municipal officials have outstanding cases where they allegedly defrauded the municipality of millions, the municipality has not only failed to address these but is refusing to share with us the progress and outcomes of these cases.
Based on this damning Report, it is evident that Msunduzi won’t see the light through section 139(1)(b) “Intervention” therefore we call on the MEC position to invoke section 139(1)(c) as Dissolving the Council is the only relevant solution.