MANDLA RADEBE of Norkem Park writes:
I read with interest the honourable mayor’s promise in Kempton Express of September 25, where he committed our city into promising to help “poor” municipalities. Apparently there are more than one of these, including one outside the country.
Personally, I have no problem with helping the “poor” or having a cooperation agreement with another municipality. I do, however, have some questions about the cooperation agreement.
Included in the agreement are, according to the mayor, issues like eradication of poverty, addressing inequality, promotion if mutual interest programmes, etc. All of that sounds good but I am disturbed by the fact that it sounds like our mayor and his team will be the “boss” over these projects.
Of particular scare is the establishment of a task team, which we know is a trend in this country to assemble and we know their failure rate at all levels of government.
The mayor, however, does not disclose how much budget has been put aside for this ambitious initiative, if there is a sponsor for it and where funds to implement it will come from.
There are other questions regarding this whole issue; eg if these municipalities are “poor”, did they approach our city for help? If yes, why didn’t they approach the national government?
Our municipality is not so rich to use our budget for other municipalities who also have their own. To think that, just because the mayor didn’t mention money, means that it won’t be spent, is self-deception. Money will be spent and in many millions.
The mayor is using OR Tambo’s life as a life being celebrated in this initiative. I think it doesn’t matter if it is OR Tambo or PW Botha we are commemorating, municipalities function with funds, and it is a decent approach to get rate and tax payers to agree to it because it will involve their money.
I actually think it is insensitive to us as rate payers, for the mayor to go around identifying “poor” municipalities and giving an impression that our municipality is rich, especially with the challenges we are facing.
I think the mayor must bloom where he is planted instead of displaying this kind of attitude and leave matters of national government to national government. With the kind of economic growth we are facing, any prudent administrator would pay focused attention on costs.
So, honourable mayor, good initiative for Alfred Nzo, but for us, not so prudent if we are the only municipality that is going to pay. And it does seem like we will pay, because others have been described as “poor”.
