Tshwane mayor takes off gloves in his fight to restore services to city
Tshwane executive mayor Cilliers Brink says the top priority in restoring the capital city to functionality is to get its finances under control.
In his first state of the city address on Thursday, the DA councillor said that the multiparty coalition he heads would deal head-on with challenges pertaining to energy security, water supply, and collection of revenue and refuse in the municipality.
“To achieve a revenue collection rate of at least 93%, we will need to perform at least 1,000 credit control disconnections every week and take measures to prevent illegal reconnections. To achieve this level of performance, the city manager will drive a series of changes in systems and personnel in the revenue management division,” Brink said.
“I have asked the city manager and the MMC for finance to take every possible step to make it easier for residents to pay their municipal accounts or to make payment arrangements.
“This will include the use of technology, including virtual meetings, improving the conditions in customer care centres and the rigorous reconciliation of accounts.”
Brink said work was under way to restore internal systems and controls in group financial services and to assist the city with this work, “two highly experienced financial managers have been seconded to the city from the National Treasury”.
Partnerships with civil society and the private sector in improving service delivery were critical, he added.
“Undoubtedly, our most valued external partner is the Danish government who, through continuous collaboration on water security, recently unveiled R33m to support us in enhancing water security through research and upgrades to our water infrastructure.”
Brink said administration would take action against officials who “fail to support us” in turning the metro around.
He said the city’s adverse audit for the 2021/22 financial year came as a shock and wakeup call, adding: “But for many residents, the audit finding confirmed their own experience of deteriorating service delivery and a sense that, like the country, the capital city was failing.”
In her report, auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke found that the metro did not have adequate systems for identifying and disclosing all irregular expenditure, which the metro valued at more than R10.4bn.
According to the report, allegations of financial misconduct were not investigated and the issue was worsened by poor internal controls, a lack of proper management of the metro’s assets and no efficient systems to detect irregular expenditure.
“Last week, the city manager [Johan Mettler], the MMC for finance [Peter Sutton] and I met with the Auditor-General’s office to discuss what the city’s administration and political leadership will do to ensure that we build the systems and controls to achieve at least an unqualified audit for the next financial year, that is the one that will start on 1 July 2023,” Brink said.
“The mayoral committee and I are fully committed to getting us out of an adverse audit opinion.
“But I also have to caution that doing so will take time, strong leadership, clear accountability and consequence management directed towards officials who fail to support us in this objective.”
Brink stressed he could not “in good conscience present a rose-tinted state of the city”, saying the metro’s focus must return to the basics of local government, “in short, water, electricity, waste collection, sewerage, roads, public lighting and safety, and finding sustainable ways of delivering these services and securing the infrastructure through which they are provided”.
His administration would leverage its financial and intellectual resources to protect communities against the devastation of “load-shedding, more than a decade of slow to no economic growth and the legacy of state capture”.
“We are, after all, the capital city of the most advanced economy on the African continent, the seat of national government, home to the University of Pretoria, University of SA and institutions like the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and several embassies and international development agencies,” Brink said.
“We are uniquely placed to source developmental finance for sustainable energy provision, water provision and waste collection.”
The administration’s immediate priorities include regaining control of the city’s finances by devising and implementing a “bold recovery plan” focusing on the core functions of the municipality; reducing the number of unscheduled water and electricity outages; investing in core infrastructure and mitigating the effects of load-shedding by producing and procuring energy independent of Eskom; and improving basic services pertaining to pothole repairs, street light maintenance, grass cutting and public cleaning.
Instilling high levels of productivity and professionalism in city officials through “appropriate performance management systems”, is among the list of priorities.
Regarding energy security, the mayor said it is imperative that the metro reduces its dependence on Eskom for the supply of about 2,500MW of electricity.
“In the next three years, at least 1,000MW must come from alternative sources, namely a combination of own generation and procurement from independent power producers.
“In the draft budget for the 2023/24 financial year, we propose to allocate R1bn for electricity and water infrastructure. As we improve our long-term planning ability and our capacity to source capital funding, this allocation will gradually improve in the coming years.”
Brink said everything that is “broken in our city can be fixed and restored. I am convinced of it, and I will work tirelessly to demonstrate that it is possible.”
ALLEGATIONS OF FINANCIAL MISCONDUCT WERE NOT INVESTIGATED AND THE ISSUE WAS WORSENED BY POOR INTERNAL CONTROLS