NELSPRUIT – Mbombela Municipality’s adjustment budget was to have been tabled to council during its first ordinary meeting of the year on Thursday.
Mr Sello Ditshego, acting municipal manager, noted in January when the mid-year budget report was tabled to council in a special meeting, that it was to be prepared and submitted for council’s approval by no later than February 28. The report showed that the year’s budget was underspent in the first half of the financial year. It was noted that most of the planned targets had not been met.
It recommended that austerity measures be implemented to effect a turnaround of the municipality’s financial situation, which had been exacerbated by forfeiting R127 million in unspent conditional grants.
This triggered drastic measures to be undertaken to ensure the R127 million was recovered from the cash to be generated from the municipality’s operating activities.
At the time of going to press, the meeting had not yet started, but the agenda showed that the attendance by councillors of the municipality’s oversight committee meetings was to be addressed. There had long been dissatisfaction regarding the failure of Section 79 committees to sit, since on occasion a quorum was not reached, or members of the executive who had failed to show up often due to clashes in their schedules. At the meeting reports on the attendance by councillors of the past two years were to be submitted.
Council was also likely to take steps in raising the minimum stipend of workers of the municipality’s Expanded Public Works Programme from the minimum amount of R70,59. The matter was raised by Mr O Mokoena, senior manager of budget and treasury, who was concerned that the programme’s funding was now considered a conditional grant instead of an incentive and had to be discussed.
Aside from a motion to be tabled by the DA to request cooperative governance and traditional affairs to intervene in Mbombela’s affairs, as reported earlier, a petition by Hillsview residents were also to be submitted, calling for service delivery in the area to be addressed. A question was also to be raised by the DA about inaccurate statements on ratepayers’ electricity bills, and what would be done to address the problem ratepayers faced.
