ANC over municipal failings
“The metro also struggled to meet its service delivery targets; for example, only 68% of the connected city programme targets and 46% of the spatially transformed city programme targets were met,” it said.
“We further found that one of the metro’s wastewater pump stations spilled sewage into the Nahoon River and its estuary posing health risks to the community due to the elevated levels of E. coli and [other] bacteria.”
To the west of Nahoon River lies the Buffalo River, which is blanketed with water hyacinth, an invasive aquatic weed, making it impossible for people to fish.
The Buffalo River, around which the city and its main town East London were built, flows through eqonce and is essential to residents’ day-to-day lives.
“We grew up fishing and the river was always clean. Unfortunately, the
children growing up today will not experience that because our river is polluted,” traditional leader Vusumzi Tyakume said.
He said fishing was not only a popular social pastime for his community but was also an essential source of food for families that largely depend on government social grants to survive.
The auditor general’s report highlighted the city’s infrastructure projects were badly run, including wastewater treatment works that ballooned from R298 million to R386.9 million “because of procurement irregularities that led to litigation and delayed the project’s completion”.
“The project is currently at a standstill because the metro has not paid the contractor and the equipment on site is deteriorating due to vandalism and the lack of maintenance,” the report stated.
Worse, Buffalo City incurred R6.5 billion in irregular expenditure, accounting for 61% of all irregular expenditure that was accumulated by Eastern Cape municipalities in the past fiscal year.
“This included R5 billion that the metro incurred in prior years but reported in the current year to resolve last year’s qualification on completeness of irregular expenditure,” the auditor general said.