Disaster department

The municipality has inadvertently admitted that there are no repair and maintenance contractors currently appointed to work on Ekurhuleni’s roads.

The massive under-spending on the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality’s (EMM) roads became clear in a report which detailed the financial and performance results for the first quarter of the 2014/2015 financial year.

The reports were tabled before council recently.

Following the report, the DA demanded that the executive committee for the EMM stop protecting the MMC for Roads and Stormwater, Clr Thumbu Mahlangu.

According to the ward 19 councillor in Ednevale, Clr Bill Rundle, the report plainly shows that his department has all but come to a standstill since the start of the financial year.

“Of the 92 capital projects listed in the report, the EMM has only begun work on 14 of them. This follows months of denials by the ruling party that six suspended officials are responsible for work in the entire department coming to a virtual halt,” said Clr Rundle.

He added that the department, which is one of the very foundations of economic development, is “dysfunctional to the point of imploding”.

“Stalled projects, diesel shortages, staff vacancies, unspent budgets, poor planning, management and budgeting completes the sorry picture of a department which the ruling party swears is functional,” said Clr Rundle.

He added that it was unacceptable that the municipality has not acted swiftly to ensure that it appoints contractors to paint road markings and repair potholes, at the very least, while it finalises the legal process which prevents it from embarking on large capital projects.