Maths and aftermaths

After the appalling and illegal three-week strike by Samwu and their amaphara, it is time to reflect on the costs. That BCM should have ever got to the situation where Samwu had 22 demands – many of them legitimate, such as providing protective clothing – is itself an indictment.

This, coupled with the lack of any Plan B to address the electricity and water outages and piles of rubbish, as well as the complete silence instead of keeping residents informed, is more than sufficient grounds for the recall of both the mayor and the municipal manager.

We now learn that the R200m given away to “solve” the strike – paid for by our rates and taxes – will be provided for in an adjustment budget in February. Initially, this R200m will come from the municipality’s cash reserves, already depleted by the R200m given away last year for similar “catch-up” pay.

This adjustment budget will now need to reflect an annual surplus of something like R100m to repay this largesse back to restore the municipal cash reserves balance.

It must also take into account that the latest (September 2018) municipal revenue collection rate is only 71% and that little, if anything, of the R500m normally collected during the three-week strike will have found its way into the BCM coffers.

This suggests that the adjustment budget will need to significantly scale down expenditure for the rest of 2018-19.

Meanwhile, good luck to those wielding calculators as they adjust our budget.

– Llewellyn Henman, Baysville