The J.B. Marks municipality held an ordinary council meeting at the Dan Tloome council chambers on Tuesday.
As usual, the meeting had all the theatrics of arguments and a marathon focus on one item, much to the annoyance of other councillors.
Despite this, however, important issues came to the fore, including an announcement that a task team has been established bring to book individuals involved in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
According to the member of the mayoral committee for finance, Kelvin Johnson, those who are guilty will be prosecuted. ‘Prosecution will happen after the investigations have been concluded,’ he said. The investigation can take up to three months. Johnson also stressed to the executive mayor that the auditor-general is set to assume the vital responsibility and power of dealing with the individuals involved in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure in the municipality. The task was previously left to the mayor of the municipality.
Alderman Chris Landsberg said the transgressions of irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure within the municipality date back to 2007. The supply chain offices are where we’ll find where the money went. More than a billion rand is gone. We must trace those people and get them to jail,’ he said.
R1.2 million budgeted for laptops
The other item on the agenda that divided the councillors was the laptop procurement for the councillors. About R1.2 million has been budgeted for this. The DA’s Anne Van Onselen suggested that councillors should buy their own laptops and the money could be utilised for service delivery instead. Hans-Jurie Moolman concurred and said the money can be used for practical needs in the community. The executive mayor cautioned the councillors, saying it was setting a bad precedent. He deemed these utterances as a ‘class position of what we have and what we don’t have. There are councillors who have never used laptops before and need them to do their work.’ He suggested that training must be organised for these councillors. The DA’s Petrus Pienaar provided a different approach that supported the laptop procurement. He argued that the council should move towards a paperless approach that could save it money.
340 toilets for Goedgevonden
In the council’s quest for service delivery in Ventersdorp, about 340 VIP toilets will be built in Goedgevonden. This is in a bid to provide toilets to communities residing in villages, However, FF Plus’s Fanie du Toit argued that these toilets cost a lot of money and would only be temporary. He called for something that would uplift the community.
The DA’s Combrick Mogwata said flush toilets should be built for people with RDP houses.
* The other issue that emerged was the overloaded Bult sewage system, which is currently operating at about 130 per cent of its capacity.
