Saturday Dispatch Water crisis top priority
DESPITE finding itself in a precarious financial position last year, the troubled Amathole District Municipality (ADM) still managed to spend millions of rands on cellphone allowances and bonuses for its staff.
The Saturday Dispatch has managed to get its hands on a confidential report detailing what a spendthrift the municipality is.
The report, which has yet to be tabled in council, shows that the ADM spent R33-million on bonuses for its 1 800 staff members and more than R15-million on cellphone allowances and 3G data cards for the financial year that ended last June.
The payments are astounding, particularly in light of a proposal that was put to the ADM council at the beginning of last year to sell off “non-core” assets in order to pay staff salaries.
The then council speaker instead recommended that water and sanitation tariffs be increased, which meant consumers would ultimately have to pay the price.
And while auditor-general Kimi Makwetu gave the ADM a clean bill of health with its fifth consecutive unqualified audit for the year that ended in June last year, he instructed the municipality to investigate and recover R9-million lost in irregular, wasteful, fruitless and unauthorised expenditure from those responsible.
It would not be the first time that the cash-strapped municipality has been criticised for its financial affairs after spending R2-million on a beauty contest, which is now the subject of a criminal case, and R1.5million to bankroll a boxing event – with neither of the events having any bearing on the responsibilities of the district municipality.
The excessive amounts paid for cellphone allowances and bonuses are mind blowing considering that the region is gripped by one of the worst droughts experienced in decades. Why would a cash-strapped municipality be paying bonuses?
Already the municipality has had to fork out more than R90-million trucking water to towns and villages in desperate need of it – and there appears to be no end in sight just yet.
Farmers and villagers have reported cattle dying as a result of dams drying up. For many of the villagers, livestock is their only source of income.
ADM spokesman Siyabulela Makunga admitted to the Dispatch: “The demand for water continues to escalate while the cost of ensuring the provision of water as a basic service rockets on a daily basis.”
Yes, the district municipality may argue that it budgeted for and can justify spending millions for cellphone allowances and travel, etc, but with a water crisis that is costing residents their livelihoods, would it not make more sense to channel the funds to where they are needed the most?