With the municipal elections less than a week away, the Herald asked outgoing ward councillors two questions about their previous term in office.
1. How many ward meetings were held each year during your time as ward councillor?
2. What were the ward funds (R120 000/year) used for in your term?
These questions were raised by members of the community, specifically on the Potchefstroom Facebook group.
Of all 26 wards, only outgoing ward 2 councillor, Johannes Froneman, replied to the Herald’s request.
According to him, answers to the questions do not reflect the work of ward councillors or the answers to their service delivery questions.
“In answering them, I do not believe they constitute a valid barometer but they do offer a starting point to address the real issues,” he said.
“I am happy to report, though, that ward 2’s ward committee met regularly, i.e. once a month (but not over holiday periods).
Ward funds were underspent due to poor supply chain management at the city council. Notwithstanding repeated requests, nothing was done during the past five years to make it easier for ward funds to be spent. This is 100 per cent the fault of the outgoing administration.
On a practical level: a competent official should assist in getting the necessary quotes or tenders. Failing this, ward funds will remain an issue.
“I can assure you that I, and other councillors, found this deliberate sabotage of the process highly problematic. It ties in with the ANC’s deliberate exclusion of non-ANC wards when items like paraffin or food parcels are handed out.
“In the case of ward 2 (which stretches more than 50 km from west to east and south right up to the Vaal River) five years of consistent pleas were mostly ignored, especially relating to the rural areas. When we finally se-cured a decision to build a community hall in Lindequesdrift, the initial R500 000 from the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District Municipality was misused by the Tlokwe City Council and there was no progress in building the facility. What voters do not always realise is that ward councillors work part-time and may not, by law, interfere with the work of officials.
While we can (and often do) point out problems (like water leaks or potholes) we, as councillors, do not have workers at our disposal. Officials do the work, not councillors.
“We are there to put by-laws in place, perform our oversight duties and liaise with all who reside in our respective wards.
The oversight duties include, inter alia, questioning the manner in which the governing party spends our money.
This we did over and over during the past five years.
However, if a speaker refuses to call regular council meetings (as the outgoing speaker did) it is difficult to bring the culprits to book.
While individual councillors (from all parties) do many things that assist in the running of the city) we ultimately need a good local government Z a competent mayor, speaker and municipal manager, excellent members of the mayoral committee and qualified se-nior managers to give direction and ensure better service delivery and value for our rands.
This is at the heart of the coming election and each voter should take that into consideration,” he said.
In a joint statement via their communications office, other DA councillors said there are simply no one-liner answers as there are various wards, which makes it an enormous task to give real facts and numbers.
There are also other implications – eg. in certain wards no money was paid over to the ward councillor etc. In some cases, DA wards were sabotaged by not getting the correct money or no money at all. Due to our focus – that is to do the best we can in the election – we will not be able to work on your enquiry. Our aim is to always reply to the media with the correct facts and numbers – due to time constraints, that can currently not happen,” read the statement.