Neels Coetzer, the DA caucus whip in Tlokwe says councillors only received the agenda and documents of more than 3000 pages for the meeting via CDs at the last minute.

“It was impossible for councillors to study the information and prepare for the meeting. Many councillors, mainly from the opposition, com-plained that their CDs did not work properly and they reported this to officials in the speaker’s office,” he said.

“The items on the agenda have piled up over many months as the previous three council meetings were postponed by a divided ANC. Since 30 November 2015, the majority of councillors requested, on three separate occasions, that meeting be held to deal with issues that were part of the Scopa (Special committee of public accounts) investigation into the council. The ANC speaker, Barei Segotso-Mosiane, refused all three requests,” he said.

Coetzer says the DA is concerned about two controversial, long-overdue cases Z on meter readings and paraffin tenders.

These were mysteriously excluded from the agenda. This, despite the Tlokwe City Council being pushed by Scopa for urgent feedback on these two important matters.

“Today, the ANC tried to bulldoze months of backlogged work through the council but realised that, if we left the chambers, they would not have a quorum. The DA sees this as a moral victory for democracy and good governance. The ANC must ensure that councillors are well prepared for council meetings in order to constructively participate when important decisions that impact on the lives of our people are made.

“The DA will always fulfil our oversight role in a responsible manner to ensure an end to the ANC’s corruption and poor service delivery in Tlokwe,” he concluded.

William Maphosa, Council spokesperson admitted that there has been a technical problem with the information CDs in the council agenda package. He said they were not compatible with all the computers and laptops and gave rise to the aborted meeting that not only affected the opposition councillors but also those from the ruling party.

“When the matter was raised with the Office of the Speaker, the IT section was immediately requested to attend to and rectify the problem. SMSs were also sent to the councillors to check their CDs and approach the office to replace them if they malfunctioned,” he said.

He also admitted that the backlog of issues that needed attention had contributed to the bulkiness of the agenda.

“Council did not sit for some time due to a number of factors, including walkouts by some opposition parties that made it difficult to form a quorum.

“It should also be noted that the first part of the agenda items for yesterday’s aborted meeting were distributed and delivered on 8 June. By 15 June, all the agenda items had been forwarded to all councillors.

The meeting itself was scheduled as early as 30 May when the mayor presented the annual budget,” he said.

Maphosa says the speaker will reschedule the meeting for another date as agreed upon by all concerned.