Estella Naicker
Mayor, Afzul Rehman’s, proposal that councillors each contribute R100 from their salary toward the meals provided at their year-end function was vehemently shot down yesterday.
Councillors from opposition parties adamantly objected to the proposal, with many shouts of, “We will not pay,” emanating from where they were seated.
The party is to be held at the Amcor Dam on Wednesday. The proposal that councillors contribute toward the cost of the meals came about during discussions at an ANC caucus meeting, and was intended to send a message to municipal staff and the community at large that the council was committed to implementing cost-cutting measures.
Former mayor of Newcastle (now a representative of the National Freedom Party), Constance Dube, was one of the councillors who were most vocal in protesting against councillors being made to pay.
Ironically, this controversial figure was previously singled out in the local media for piling her plate high at municipal functions.
Cllr Dube said the reason she objected to councillors having to pay for their meals was because it was a big change from tradition that needed to be discussed within party caucuses before a decision was taken.
“Traditionally, the municipality used to give us a Christmas send-off. We were upset that the mayor discussed moving away from this tradition with the ANC first. They discussed it in their caucus before consulting with council. How can they take a decision and then come to us and expect us to submit and just co-operate? It’s not just fair,” she said.
Cllr Thengi Zulu of the IFP, who was also opposed to councillors paying, agreed with Cllr Dube.
“Just because the ANC is in the majority, they feel they can take a decision on their own. They need to respect us as opposition parties. This party was also budgeted for,” he said. “Anyway, why are they trying to justify saving R6 000 here, when they spend hundreds of the thousands of rands every year, hosting their strategic workshop outside of town? If they really want to cut costs, they need to start there and host the strategic workshop in Newcastle instead of paying for travelling and hotel accommodation and meals for three days.”
Cllr Rehman explained, “While R6 000 seemed like a drop in the ocean at the municipality, the point in making the proposal was to send a message to the staff and community that councillors are not just there for a free meal.”
He admits that he had not considered that, perhaps, not all of the councillors would be in a position to afford R100 out of their salaries on such short notice, but he would like to encourage the council to look at the possibility of bearing this cost in the new year.
“I didn’t expect it to cause such a big reaction but I believe that the councillors who objected did so because they were upset that credit would go to the ANC for making this proposal,” he insisted.
Defending the municipality’s decision to host the strategic workshop out of town, Cllr Rehman said, “I will always vociferously argue that we have changed the strategic workshops to budget workshops. At the workshops, we look at new ways of doing things to make it cheaper. We start at 8am, we finish at 10pm and we do the work that needs to be done to make the municipality financially viable. We have reached the stage where we use the bare minimum in loan funding, and we may spend about R250 000 on the workshop but we save R30-million from our efforts at the workshop.”He continued, “The workshop needs to be held out of town away from family to help the team focus, and as a team building exercise I must say that it is my favourite time of the year at the municipality. This is when I get to see the people we are working with and understand how they work.”
