HIGHVELD – Govan Mbeki Municipality’s executive mayor, Ms Thandi Ngxonono, has finally spoken about the Disclaimer Audit Opinion received by the Govan Mbeki Municipality (GMM) in the previous financial year.
The outcome of Auditor General’s final audit has been released to the municipality in January, but the management and municipal officials remained mum about it until the recent council meeting.
Ms Ngxonono expressed her displeasure and said this poor report must not happen again.
She described the outcome as highly unacceptable and instructed the Municipal Manager, Mr Felani Mndebele, to lead a process of reversing the audit opinion.
“We demand that Mr Mndebele and his administration use their insight and experience to extract our municipality from our current financial dilemma.
“We want to run this institution like a business entity to ensure maximum effectiveness and efficient delivery of services to the public.
“The doomsayers will always want us to over-stress on our failures and by doing so, forget about the positive results that we have achieved and continue to achieve, despite the horrible challenges that we are grappling with on a daily basis,” said the mayor.
“It would be incorrect to make a socio-economic and political analysis of our municipality using a narrow-singular-unipolar analysis which would be tantamount to suggest that we are facing an Armageddon.”
Ms Ngxonono claimed that GMM is the best performing municipality among the seven municipalities in the Gert Sibande District.
“We are the only municipality in the province that supplies clean drinkable water above the 90 per cent mark, and thus meeting the standards set by Rand Water.
“These are concrete achievements that we have to be proud of despite all the challenges. Despite all these daunting challenges and headaches, we should also indicate that we have made serious strides in our quest to turn the situation around.”
Ms Ngxonono recently summoned the entire administration to find out why the municipality is still experiencing difficulties, especially in their revenue collection segment.
She said the reasons given varied and were multi-dimensional, but foremost was the fact that most people are not paying for services rendered.
“This is the elephant in the room and we must tackle it with vigour, determination and fearlessness in the same way we tackled the Apartheid system during the liberation struggle.
“It cannot be correct that there are people who are not paying for the municipal services, whereas there are people who are paying for these services. I would like to reiterate the call to our people that are paying for their services will help the municipality to execute its responsibilities.
“We are equally calling on businesses to pay for municipal services, which will then help us to enhance service delivery across the board.”
Ms Ciska Jordaan, DA caucus leader, said the findings in Auditor General’s report came as no surprise. She said the ANC-led municipality simply do not learn from these findings.
“Besides the disappointment at the secrecy and vagueness with which the municipality distributes information, residents are also directly being affected in their homes, finding themselves without the services for which they have paid.
“Residents of Govan Mbeki Municipality deserve a ruling party that can place their interests at the top of the priority list.
“Several DA-led municipalities all over the country, such as the Midvaal Municipality, are achieving clean audit opinions year after year. This could be the case in Govan Mbeki Municipality if residents are willing to make their votes count. Only the DA are able to oust the uncaring ANC.”
