HIGHVELD – The Govan Mbeki Municipality is under fire for their three-day strategic planning meeting held at a Badplaas resort last week.
Various organisations, including Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) and the Democratic Alliance (DA), have slammed the municipality for this and said the money should rather have been used for service delivery issues.
It is alleged that the municipality forked out more than R250 000 to pay for more than 50 workers and the mayoral committee to attend the meeting.
Outa called on the Mpumalanga provincial legislature to place the municipality under administration.
Mr Michael Holenstein, manager of Outa’s local government programme, said it was unacceptable behaviour of the municipality, which was placed under a mandatory intervention a few months ago and which cannot pay its Eskom and Rand Water bills.
“This is very irresponsible and totally unacceptable in a bankrupt municipality.
“This municipality is unable to provide basic services to residents and cannot even pay creditors such as Eskom and Rand Water.
“Where is the provincial executive in all of this?”
He called on the province to impose a much stronger form of intervention such as invoking Section 139 of the constitution by dissolving the municipal council and appointing an administrator.
Ms Anita Mkhwebane, DA Councillor, wrote a letter to the mayor demanding answers.
She said the municipality recently approved a budget with a deficit and every report is inundated with reference to the dire financial situation faced by the municipality.
“Creditors are not paid as result of our cashflow problems. We need answers about this meeting.”
In her letter, she asked why was the meeting not held locally to reduce the costs.
She also wanted to find out the overall costs and said if there are people who donated it should made known.
Ms Mkhwebane also requested that detailed minutes of the meeting be made available in the next Council Meeting.
Mr Benzi Soko, chief of staff, said strategic planning sessions are organised by all municipalities as a platform to engineer solutions for whatever challenges they face.
He said there is no crime committed in organising the strategic planning session and that as a matter of fact, all municipalities have already held their StratPlans earlier this year.
Mr Soko said the Govan Mbeki Municipality was actually delayed, because this session was supposed to be held between January and February, but it did not happen as many provincial and national events that took place in the area.
“The strategic planning session is a very serious and important business in the local government sphere.
“It is through the StratPlan that we must produce workable solutions for issues that are bedevilling the municipality.
“It is also through the StratPlan that we must provide both the prognosis and diagnosis of the challenges and eventually the roadmap that will finally extricate the institution from these stubborn challenges.
“We have therefore executed this assignment with diligence, commitment and professionalism befitting its fundamentals.
“We are not going to be bogged down by the criticism that is aimed at distracting our attention from the task at hand.
“We attended the strategic planning session in line with all the protocols governing local government in South Africa. History has placed us in this epoch in order to turn the municipality around for the better.”
