Government needs stronger civil society input in budget to avoid backlash – Outa

Local municipalities need stronger public engagements on financial budgets, to see improvements in revenue collection and in the long run better financial standing for the entities.

This according to Outa (Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse) parliamentary engagement manager Matt Johnston, who said lack of public engagements regarding budgets created a drift between government and people.

Last week, Tshwane metro municipality reported that there was a bill of R12-billion owed to them by households and businesses.

In dealing with this issue, Johnston said municipalities throughout the province faced the same issue and not just Tshwane metro, and needed to host public engagements with residents to solve this.

“Engagements give people the opportunity to understand where their money is going and they are always willing to comply when this is done. More public engagements on municipal budgets could see more paying for services and this will help municipalities,” he said.

Johnston said although there were opportunities for recommendations in annual budget processes for civil society to make comments on budgets these opportunities were “ineffective and hollow”.

There needed to be stronger input from the public on budgets from national government level down to municipalities, for government to avoid public backlash on finance issues, he said.

“The recommendation processes are always held after the decisions have been taken and comments are hardly taken into consideration. This needs to change to achieve effective governance.

“If people understand what it is they are paying for and they agreed on this, they are always willing to comply, but if they do not agree they will protest. The e-toll saga is a typical example of this.”

In August, Tshwane residents were outraged after a budget was approved by the metro which introduced a fixed water and sanitation charge. Several residents said they would not pay for this.

The metro, which was under administration at the time, did not facilitate public participation due to the Covid-19 outbreak, however, a budget participation was opened via email.

Johnston said amid the Covid-19 outbreak there needed to be more online platforms for interactive public participation on budgets.

“Public participation is always published in small spaces or sections hardly read in newspapers, a lot of people end up not knowing about this and cannot inform and educate themselves on these matters. More must be done to to make people aware of these in all spheres of governance.

“Meaningful engagement with those who decide how our hard-earned taxes are collected and spent should not be a privilege for which South Africans should have to beg.”

He warned that while annual medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS) might be boring and unpopular, these processes had a real impact on residents’ pockets.

“People are on the ground and can inform the government on what works and what doesn’t, therefore, money will not be splashed on things that do not assist communities – those are one of the benefits for this engagements.”