Ward councillors demand PAs, top-class equipment

BUFFALO City Metro (BCM) ward councillors want personal assistants, laptops and bags – and if acting accounting officer Nceba Ncunyana and his administrators fail to provide these and many more things they will “feel their [councillors] wrath”.

The councillors said they felt “undermined” by officials whom they accused of treating councillors like “refuse bags” used for dumping “inadequate” 3G cards and laptops.

Councillors said personnel such as cleaners had not been provided for their offices.

The councillors warned – get the funds for the laptops and PAs even if you “dig it out of a mine”.

During yesterday’s council meeting, tensions ran high as councillors berated the administration for failing to provide ward councillors with personal assistants or secretaries, cleaners, and security guards for their ward offices.

They said such oversights were deterring them from properly executing their duties.

Senior administrators, led by Ncunyana, were told they were employed by councillors and should make it their priority to provide all necessary personnel and proper tools for councillors to operate adequately.

The administration was given until end of February to provide all 50 metro ward councillors with personnel and tools such as laptops with internet access.

First to fire the salvo at yesterday’s meeting was deputy executive mayor Zoliswa Matana, who said it “was a shame” ward councillors were not taken seriously by officials.

Matana said council had long resolved that all ward councillors be provided with the personnel and tools, and officials should implement this “long-standing resolution of council”.

The deputy mayor said the argument that there was not enough budget to implement the resolution did not stand and city administration “should source such funds from wherever”.

Council chief whip Mzwandile Vaaibom said he was worried that ward councillors were not seen as a “priority” by city bosses.

“This matter should be treated as a matter of urgency,” Vaaibom urged Ncunyana and his team.

ANC councillor Crosby Kolela did not mince his words, saying councillors were treated as “refuse bags where inadequate and outdated computers and slow 3G cards were dumped”, while officials were provided with the latest top-class gadgets.

Kolela also lamented the fact that the laptops given to them “were in school bags”.

“The quality of our laptops is bad and unacceptable. That they came in school bags is an insult to the integrity of these councillors.

“Even the 3G cards, they are very slow and can take up to an hour to open up a document.”

Kolela said the offices they worked in as ward councillors “were like pigsties and result in us not being afforded the respect we deserve by the communities we serve”.

DA councillor Jan Smit said the employment of such assistants should be “properly managed by [the metro’s] human resources unit to avoid corruption and nepotism”. —