Municipality slammed over unspent R60m, while Makhanda falls apart

Civil society organisations are furious at Makana Municipality for its inability to spend more than R60m intended to upgrade its decrepit public infrastructure

money National Treasury now wants returned to its coffers.

Fed-up Makhanda residents battle constant and prolonged electricity and water outages and smelly sewage flowing past their homes and schools because of old and poorlymaintained municipal infrastructure.

But, for two years in a row, the Makana Municipality underspent millions of rand on conditional grants it receives from national government intended to upgrade its collapsing infrastructure.

It dramatically underspent on its integrated national electrification programme grant, and its municipal infrastructure and water services infrastructure grants.

National Treasury has now written to Makana saying it wants it to return to the National Revenue Fund [NRF] R26.2m unspent funds for 2022/23 and R34.5m from the previous year.

The National Treasury noted in its letter that the municipality had appealed the decision to recall the unspent allocation, claiming there had been a “mapping error” in its financial statements.

The municipality had not commented at the time of writing.

The Public Service Accountability Monitor (Psam) and its Action for Accountability Project CivActs partners said the municipality owed the public a detailed explanation for its inadequate spending “while many residents continue to be exposed to sewage leaks, inadequate refuse collection, water leaks and outages”.

“Many people do not know that money is being returned, while government often says there is no money.

“CivActs questions why the municipality asks for large amounts of money if they cannot spend it or motivate for rollovers.”

The Psam said National Treasury’s call for the repayment of R60m in unspent conditional grant funding was the direct result of poor planning, reporting and consequence management at senior management and councillor level across the municipality.

“These ‘leaders’ have once again failed to adequately perform their responsibilities and support social and economic development,” it said.

It renewed its call for an intervention by national and provincial government to address “longstanding systemic governance and accountability failures” in the municipality. The Auditor-General has also repeatedly hauled the municipality over the coals for its failure to properly account for its funds.

The AG in June this year issued the dysfunctional municipality with an audit disclaimer for the fourth year in a row. This is the most adverse audit finding the AG can make.

It means the municipality provided too little documentary information on which the AG could base an audit opinion in the first place.