Controversy over Enoch councillors
THE cash-strapped Enoch Mgijima local municipality has appointed 12 full-time councillors instead of two as permitted by law.
According to the 2016 provincial Gazette, the municipality can only employ two fulltime councillors – the executive mayor and the council speaker.
Municipal manager, Siyabonga Nkonki, yesterday confirmed to the Daily Dispatch that the municipality had indeed appointed 10 more councillors full-time even though the law only permitted just two.
“We are dealing, with a technicality here and the technicality was created in the inauguration when the mayor in her speech announced members of the mayoral committee together with the municipal public accounts committee (MPAC) chairman and a chief whip,” Nkonki said.
“The municipality had to remunerate those councillors accordingly because they were performing full-time duties. We are now in a process of rectifying that technicality.”
Enoch Mgijima local municipality was established after the August 2016 local elections through merging of Tsolwana, Inkwanca and Lukhanji local municipalities.
The municipality can only add other fulltime councillors if they get approval from the MEC of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Fikile Xasa.
The request for these councillors has to come with a council resolution which the municipality does not have.
Nkonki also confirmed that the municipality had never requested the MEC to endorse the additional members.
“We are rectifying the process, we will write to the council and with the direction from the council we will apply the Act and rectify the matter,” Nkonki said.
The DA’s Malibongwe Xhelisilo said the municipality deliberately ignored the law and appointed the full-time councillors.
“Those councillors have been illegally paid with municipal funds that could have been used for infrastructure and service delivery,” he said.
Last year in the Amahlathi local municipality, Xasa had to write an instruction for the municipality to fire a full-time chief whip and MPAC chairman who were given fulltime status without following the correct processes.
The MEC’s orders came after the mun council was scaled down from 40 to 30 seats.
This meant they could no longer have fulltime chief whip and MPAC chairman on fulltime pay.