Maile says it’s difficult to govern under coalitions
Wasteful expenditure rises to R23.62bn for all municipalities – MEC
Coalition arrangements are complicating how municipalities in Gauteng are run, says provincial cooperative governance MEC Lebohang Maile.
Maile painted a bleak picture at a media briefing on Monday, saying some municipalities were passing unfunded budgets that continued receiving disclaimers from the auditor-general (AG).
He said only two of the province’s 11 municipalities received clean audits from the AG for the 2020/2021 financial year.
Maile said unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure was sitting at a combined R23.62bn for all municipalities in the province.
He said this was an increase of R14.28bn from the previous financial year.
“Coalition arrangements are also complicating things, especially when it comes to appointment of city and section 56 managers because those are appointments that must be voted on by council,” he said. “Managers are lobbying councillors and parties because they know they do not agree.
“I got an official letter of complaint on Friday which speaks to forensic investigations and this is also regards to the filling of the vacancy of a city manager [in Johannesburg],” he said.
Maile said only three municipalities had permanent city managers which contributed to the poor audit outcomes.
“Two municipalities received clean audits while seven obtained an unqualified audit opinion with findings. The two most disconcerting audit opinions are ones on the Rand West and Merafong, both adverse findings on certain material findings,” he said.
Currently under administration, Maile said Emfuleni was a perfect case study on how not to run municipalities.
In December, Rand Water attached Emfuleni’s bank account but a payment of R252m was soon made.
“Merafong City has a 36month payment arrangement with Rand Water, but it’s not honouring the payment arrangement and the municipality was served with a notice of late payment letter in November which has still not been responded to,” he said.
The MEC said no-one was being singled out but provincial government wanted municipalities to perform better for residents. Only Ekurhuleni is considered to be stable.
“We’ve got a performance matrix … and it looks at financial performance, governance, service delivery, vacancy rate and billing system.
“When we analyse a municipality we look at these things because there are targets which include revenue collection. When you miss your targets, we raise our concerns so our reports are based on an objective criteria and the information we get from them. It’s not that we don’t like anyone.”