North West municipalities leave R460 million unspent for 2021-22

National Treasury has moved to stop conditional grants for nine municipalities in the North West because they failed to spend grants meant for infrastructure central to service delivery in communities.

More than R460 million earmarked for service delivery, particularly infrastructure, for the 2021-22 financial year, is to be returned to the fiscus because nine municipalities left it unspent despite communities crying for service delivery.

Opposition

The opposition in the province has expressed concern that so much money has been lost as this would have “far-reaching consequences for infrastructure development, maintenance and service delivery in the province’s worst performing municipalities”.

The culprits cited by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana were Matlosana local municipality, Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati district municipality, Rustenburg, Moses Kotane, JB Marks, Madibeng, Ratlou, Ditsobotla and Mamusa.

The minister notified North West MEC for cooperative governance and traditional affairs Nono Maloyi about the situation.

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Figures

Madibeng alone will lose a whopping R145.4 million, Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati gives up R119.4 million and Rustenburg R65.3 million while JB Marks and Matlosana will have R59 million and R26 million respectively returned to the National Treasury.

These municipalities did not perform in line with the objectives and goals set to utilise grants for crucial service delivery programmes.

These included energy efficiency and demand-side management grants, regional bulk infrastructure grants, water services infrastructure grants, municipal infrastructure grants, neighbourhood development partnership grants and the integrated national electrification programme.

Conditional grants are the funds transferred each financial year by the National Treasury to ensure that national priorities are adequately addressed in provincial and local government budgets.

Democratic Alliance (DA) member of the North West Legislature Freddy Sonakile criticised the provincial government for losing the funds.

Backlog

“North West suffers a massive infrastructure backlog. National Treasury’s decision, although understandable, will put additional strain on the already limited cash flow of municipalities,” he said.

The DA demanded the provincial public accounts committee summon all affected municipalities to account for failures to spend conditional grant funding.

Godongwana said prior to National Treasury’s intervention, the departments of water and sanitation, cooperative governance and mineral resources and energy and the neighbourhood development partnership unit within National Treasury had indicated some municipalities would not be able to fully utilise grants allocations for the 202223 financial year.

These departments requested that portions of conditional grant allocations to affected municipalities be stopped.

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