The tale of twinning cities
Opposition parties have strongly objected to the sending of a five-man delegation to Portugal as part of the Cooperative Twinning Agreement between the City of Mbombela and Leiria Municipality.
MBOMBELA – The seven-day trip, which was approved by council in a special sitting last week, is likely to cost the taxpayer as much as R500 000, with business-class flights alone costing between R38 000 and R60 000 per person, depending on the route.
The two municipalities signed into the cooperative agreement on March 9 when a delegation from Leiria visited Mbombela. In turn, the executive mayor, Cllr Sibusiso Mathonsi has been invited to the Portuguese city’s annual celebrations on May 22.
According to the report tabled in council, the City of Mbombela’s delegation would also include the general managers for energy and city planning, and the senior managers for waste removal, and intergovernmental and international affairs.
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The group would attend the official celebrations with “the rest of the time spent on consolidation of projects and programmes to be implemented during the first year of the five-year agreement”.
The report said the production of renewable energy from waste will be the first major project to be explored by the two cities. Leiria is allegedly already producing 40 per cent of its power from its landfill site.
The annual celebration is only for one day and yet the trip is seven days. We have not been sufficiently informed about these projects or programmes to be implemented.
“We also haven’t been given a proper idea of how the City of Mbombela was going to benefit from the trip,” Van der Merwe told Lowvelder.
“Council just cannot justify the spending at present. Once again, we had to write off R2,3 million in wasteful and fruitless expenditure, mostly due to the interest accumulated on the Eskom account. Writing off debt and going on trips to Portugal are just not viable at this time.”
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Mr Lucky Shongwe, EFF party whip, said the party is totally against the trip.
We believe it is a waste of taxpayers’ money to just go and celebrate, given the fact that the municipality does not have enough money, not to mention the money we lose every quarter due to fruitless and irregular expenditure,” Shongwe said.
