Lockdown hampered municipal budget performance, says Mayor

KwaDukuza municipality has underperformed significantly over the past 10 months – and lays the blame squarely at the door of the coronavirus.

Despite remaining on full salaries throughout the pandemic, overall municipal performance slipped by a further 17% to less than 50% effectiveness.

Continued under-spending of budgets, delays in project completion and infrastructure development projects, non-compliance with supply chain management legislation, and irregular expenditure still top the list of shortcomings.

This was revealed by Mayor Dolly Govender last week, when she presented the 2019-20 draft annual report and the 2020-21 mid-year budget and performance assessment report.

According to the report irregular expenditure rose to R169.06 million, up R27.29 million over the R141.77 million last year – put down to the continued failure to follow supply chain management regulations.

While Govender blamed the pandemic for “unaccounted expenditure”, opposition councillor Moosa Motala said this was not a satisfactory explanation.

Motala, representing the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), said the problem was that there were no consequences for transgressions and irregularities.

He blamed contract management and poor buying processes for KDM’s failure to stick with regulations.

“These can only be turned around if leadership takes the lead in the drive towards clean administration,” he said.

KDM has also failed to spend its budget on capital works – projects ranging from road and sanitation, electricity to building schools and community halls – commonly interpreted as lack of service delivery. Of a budget of R316 million, R87 million (37%) was unspent.

Govender attributed the under-spending to the pandemic.

“A lot of planned projects were delayed as most of the budget was transferred to Covid-19 disaster projects. If it was not for the National State of Disaster it is evident there would have been a much higher increase in basic service delivery.”

The Democratic Alliance (DA) pounced on consumer debt as an area of major concern. As of the end of December, halfway through the year, KDM is owed R240 million by ratepayers. This is R22.6 million (10%) up on the previous year.

Ratepayers hit hard by the pandemic are battling to pay for municipal services such as water, sanitation, electricity, refuse removal and property rates, as well as traffic fines.

DA chief whip Tammy Colley warned defaulting was likely to continue in the current economic climate. She pointed out that electricity worth R115 million had not been paid for, which is nearly 20% of total electricity bought by KDM.

“This is shocking. It is also concerning that the Electricity Business Unit has already spent 50% of its overtime budget.”

Mayor Govender said steps were being taken to stop electricity being used without payment and to collect outstanding debts. More than 800 consumers with a total outstanding debt of R21 million had been disconnected.

Govender said 317 electricity tamper fines, of which 181 were business properties, were issued totaling R3.6 million.

She also expressed the hope that the promised vaccines would offer a clear route out of the “acute phase of the crisis” but also recognised that this would only likely take place in the second half of the year.

Dolphin Coast Residents and Ratepayers Association (Docrra) chairman, Deon Viljoen said the biggest challenge facing KDM remained operational implementation.

“We are still awaiting the financial statements and the mid-term results for 2020-21. As soon as they have been received we will present detailed feedback on behalf of the Dolphin Coast community.”