Editor – For the second time since the ANC took control of uThukela District Municipality, it has been put under administration by the ANC MEC.
This is a serious indictment of the ANC and is a clear message to voters that the ANC is not capable of running the municipality.
Given the success of DA-run municipalities, wherever the DA is in control throughout South Africa, it must now be very obvious to the voters in Uthukela that the only party that has what it takes to successfully run uThukela District Municipality is the DA.
Simply putting uThukela under administration is not the answer.
What the ANC should be doing is to ensure that their cadres deployed to Uthukela put the interests of the people of Uthukela first by stopping the huge waste of money and often alleged tender irregularities and to ensure that the limited funds available are used for service delivery instead of parties and jamborees such as the so-called “break-away” for councillors to a fancy Berg resort that cost R200,000.
This is particularly irresponsible when it is revealed that uThukela has now gotten so far into debt that it is unable to meet normal operating expenses.
In a letter to the Gazette which was published on March 16, 2018, our DA councillors warned that the municipality was sailing very close to the wind, as they had less than one month cost average ratio, whereas National Treasury requires three months. The bottom line is that uThukela District Municipality is insolvent.
One of the first areas for newly-appointed administrator Mr Makhanya to clamp down on is the massive numbers of back office over-paid staff who have very little work to do and whose massive costs have contributed considerably to the bankruptcy of the municipality.
Given the poor levels of service delivery, there is an urgent need to ensure that the correct skills are employed and that front-line staff know that their job is to provide service levels of excellence to the people of Uthukela. For instance, it cannot be tolerated that raw sewage is allowed to run unchecked into streams and rivers for months and years on end.
The DA will monitor the performance of the administrator very closely to ensure that he cuts expenses and ensures that all the consumers, wherever they live in Uthukela and who are not indigent, pay for the services they receive.
For too long, a few consumers have diligently paid for the services they receive while large numbers of non-indigent consumers simply refuse to pay or even worse are not even billed by uThukela because they happen to live outside of the formal towns.
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