The party’s over for errant municipal councillors found to have defaulted on their rates payments.
KZN MEC for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) Nomusa Dube-Ncube has instructed municipal councils in all of KZN’s 61 municipalities to institute disciplinary action against any councillor found to have defaulted on his or her rates, as this constitutes a violation of the councillors’ code of conduct.
This could result in councillors being sacked.
The tough stance by MEC Dube-Ncube comes after an in-depth investigation by her department into a number of compliance issues by municipal office bearers and officials, which included investigations into payments of rates by councillors, which is a universal obligation of all municipal residents except those who qualify as indigents.
The departmental investigation has revealed that a total of R1,5-million is owed by councillors to various municipalities throughout KZN. Reacting to the outcome of the investigation, Dube-Ncube said: “I am deeply disturbed to learn that there are councillors who are not leading by example in municipalities by paying their dues to the municipalities which they represent. While the number of delinquent local government leaders is relatively small, we nevertheless view their conduct in a serious light because they are bringing their municipalities into disrepute.
“This conduct has compromised the recent good audit reports from the Auditor-General, where at least nine clean audits were recorded, up from only one in the previous financial year.
“I have since ordered the speakers of municipal councils to convene meetings to deal with this issue without delay, and report back to the department. We take a dim view of such practices, and we want to see consequences.
“Those councillors who wish to dispute their account bills must take the necessary steps speedily, as we cannot allow this figure to accumulate any further. Our municipalities can ill-afford councillors who owe rates while they depend for their livelihoods on ordinary ratepayers.” MEC Dube-Ncube has also vowed to extend the investigation to civil servants in every other sphere of government as well as MPs and MPLs in the province. It is not clear what the situation is at Endumeni as no comment was received at the time of going to press.