POLOKWANE – The Polokwane Housing Association (PHA) was deemed a burden to the municipality by the DA during a city council meeting last Thursday.
This followed the municipality’s recommendation that its loan to the PHA of just over R11 million be written off and adjusted in the 2014/15 financial year as part of reporting. The PHA is a municipality-owned entity.
The DA opposed this and said a task team needed to be appointed to investigate the PHA. “They have a loan of millions being written off, with irregular expenditures of more than R10 000. Who will be held accountable for the irregular expenditures?” the DA wanted to know.
Polokwane mayor, Thembi Nkadimeng, said for the past three years the PHA had received a clean audit opinion.
“The PHA phase 2 never happened. There are supposed to be 1 000 units and there are only 500. By writing off the loan, it will enable the PHA to finance phase 2. There is no issue about the PHA being self sufficient. Yes, they had challenges, we assisted them and now they have moved from 30% to 80% completion (of their project),” Nkadimeng said.
Another pressing matter in the council meeting was that the municipality’s legal fees were too high.
“Just to give one example, there is one hearing for which the municipality spent R255 853 on legal fees. This is very high and the municipality must revise this and look into alternatives so that legal fees are not this high,” a DA councillor said.
Nkadimeng responded that disciplinary hearings took time: “I know of a case where the hearing has been going on from 2011 to date. But in regard to the matter raised by the DA, I suggested that we negotiated on the matter and withdrew.”
There was also a concern raised that the Polokwane Municipality was not financially strong enough to take over the Aganang Municipality situated in the Capricorn district, which was recently declared bankrupt.
“We are a financially weak municipality and taking a municipality that is bankrupt, ensuring service delivery with our finances, is a dangerous situation. Did we do a feasible study to see whether we can afford it?”
Nkadimeng said the decision on whether the municipality would take on more wards or not, was not up to the municipality.
“This is a decision that is made by the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB), and I have never seen a municipality act against its government legally. I don’t understand what you are afraid of. This is the same process we followed in getting to five clusters. It is only when we get feedback from the MDB that we know how many wards we will get and only then will we be able to calculate what they have and what they do not have,” Nkadimeng said.
