Umzimvubu mayor promises more cuts

DESPITE her municipality celebrating a clean audit in the 2015-16 financial year for the first time in years, the new mayor of Umzimvubu local municipality has promised more drastic cuts – especially on travel, accommodation and catering for meetings.

Addressing a media breakfast in KwaBhaca (Mt Frere) yesterday where she highlighted municipal achievements in her first 100 days in office, mayor Bulelwa Mabengu said they wanted to channel more money towards service delivery.

“There will be belt-tightening measures for travelling for councillors and officials and on S&T (subsistence and travelling),” she said.

The mayor revealed that the municipality had for many years been receiving qualified audit findings from the Auditor-General and were happy to have finally managed to turn the situation around.

“We want to keep this [clean audit findings] going for a long time,” she added.

The municipality, which incorporates Emaxesibeni (formerly M Ayliff) and KwaBhaca, has been a scene of violent community protests by angry villagers demanding electricity from government.

Mabengu said they had met with all roleplayers after her new administration was sworn in on August 19, including rural communities, ratepayers and traditional councils.

She said they had discovered during some of the interactions that electricity was at the top of the service delivery demands by the communities.

The municipality has since spent around R25million towards bringing electricity to as many as 1 752 rural homesteads.

Power utility, Eskom, meanwhile has contributed around R10-million towards the projects to bring electricity to rural areas.

Municipal manager Thobela Nota said they had been informed by Eskom that their substations lacked capacity, which caused delays in the electrification of many areas.

However, he said the municipality had devised a plan to counter that problem.

It is anticipated that the projects would be completed around March this year.

Mabengu also revealed that they had allocated a sum of R21.5-million towards revamping several access roads in both KwaBhaca and Emaxesibeni.

She said many businesses in town had also been issued with trading licences while more than 250 jobs had been created through the Extended Public Works Programme.

However, she also revealed that the municipality was currently not generating enough revenue to implement all its service delivery requirements.

As such, it was looking at other means to help boost its revenue streams. These included creating a conducive environment for business to thrive.

She said it was hoped such a move would also help attract huge investments from outside to come and invest in the Umzimvubu municipality.

“We are committed to bringing service delivery to our people.” — sikhon@dispatch.co.za