Dept appoints top Sol officials
REDUCED to a shadow of its former self, unable to settle its Eskom bill for the last two months, the now almost crippled Sol Plaatje Municipality has been thrown a life-support following an announcement that the provincial Department of Coghsta has appointed an Acting Municipal Manager and Chief Financial Officer.
While the MM and CFO have been sitting at home on full pay for the last year, and continue to do so, the struggling municipality has seen a succession of officials acting in the two top posts.
At last week’s Sol Plaatje City Council meeting, the Executive Mayor, Patrick Mabilo, proposed that the provincial Department of Co-operative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (Coghsta) be approached to appoint two employees from the provincial office to fill the two posts in an acting capacity.
It was announced yesterday that Thami Mabija and Zahid Cader had been appointed as Acting MM and CFO respectively.
Spokesperson for the Office of the Executive Mayor, Persome Oliphant, confirmed that the contract of the former acting Municipal Manager had expired on September 25 2019.
“The recently appointed acting Municipal Manager and acting Chief Financial Officer were introduced at a joint meeting of the Mayoral Committee Members and Executive Directors convened by the Executive Mayor yesterday,” she said.
The post of Municipal Manager has been vacant for more than a year already, despite the fact that the former MM is still receiving his full salary of more than R2.2 million annually.
The municipality is also paying the salary of the CFO (budgeted at R1.98 million a year) and that of the Executive Director of Corporate Services, who has been on extended sick leave since February.
The new Acting MM, Mabija, was previously the acting head of the Northern Cape Provincial Treasury. According to the Department’s website, he holds a Masters Degree in Business Leadership and is currently finalising another Masters in Public Administration.
“Mabija has extensive experience in serving the Northern Cape Provincial Government Administration and has gone through all the ranks to acquire skills and knowledge. He started his career in 1997 as an accounting clerk and progressed to the level of financial controller at the Premier’s Office. He was later appointed as Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Roads, Transport and Public Works.
Leadership
“His financial knowledge, strong analytical and leadership skills are several leadership qualities that saw him win the award for the Best Presented Annual Report for two consecutive years, namely in the 2009/10 and 2010/11 financial years by SAIGA.
“As Chief Financial Officer for the Free State Provincial Treasury he achieved a Clean Audit Status for five conservative years. He returned to the Northern Cape Province in 2016 as Chief Director for Asset & Liabilities responsible for managing and overseeing provincial cash management which includes Investments and Banking, Provincial Physical Asset Monitoring, Provincial Infrastructure Management, driving the Infrastructure Delivery Management Services (IDMS) and implementing Provincial Supply Chain Management (SCM) reforms and doing oversight in the province.”
Cader is the Director of Financial Management in the Provincial Government.
Among the first items that the new appointees will be required to deal with is the current financial state of the municipality, which – for the first-time ever – has joined the ranks of local authorities that are unable to pay their Eskom accounts and is officially in the red.
Spokesperson for the municipality, Sello Matsie, confirmed yesterday that local authority has a “fiscal deficit” on its operational electrify service budget of about 15%.
He stated that this was due to the non-billing of R260 residential basic charge.
“This had an impact of about R120 million after the basic charge was abolished by the city council following public protests in the last financial year.
“This position also worsened in the current financial budget when the municipality considered adopting an operational budget with a R50 million deficit following consultations with stakeholders during public participations on residential household and proposed seasonal tariffs.”
He added that the municipality had actively implemented an efficiency plan on municipality electricity service revenue which, among other things, included identifying unbilled meters for active billing, decreasing electricity theft, installing pre-paid meters, charging correct tariffs per customer categories, improved collection rate and credit control action to interrupt services of those who are not paying their arrear debt accounts or making payment arrangements.
It also interacted with high consumers of electricity, including government and business, to speed up the process of debt collection.
Despite the efficiency plan, Matsie confirmed that the municipality faced a challenge of settling in full the current accounts for July and August. He stated that this was because of high winter billing charged by the bulk supplier, Eskom, which was normally double the average monthly amount paid to Eskom in the lower summer seasons.
“The municipality has entered into a payment arrangement with Eskom to specifically settle the high winter billing over this period.”
He assured residents that the municipality was in good standing with Eskom and no electricity disconnections in the city were expected.
“We are appealing to all electricity users to settle their current accounts in time in order to benefit from early settlement incentives or to make suitable payment arrangements on their arrear debt to avoid interruption of their services due to non-payment.”