VANDERBIJLPARK – “The municipal manager of the Emfuleni Local Municipality, April Ntuli, can no longer be allowed to continue this failure to manage the municipality properly.”
Opposition parties believe the time has come for him to resign. The Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC), of which the FF Plus is a member, already extended an invitation to Ntuli on March 31 this year to explain R1b in unauthorised expenditure before the committee.
“He simply did not show up,” said councillor Hein van der Lith of the FF Plus in Emfuleni.
The largest portion of the unauthorised expenditure is reportedly the rental of the OK Building in President Paul Kruger Street in Vanderbijlpark.
The rent for the building is said to amount to R1.3m per month, without a lease agreement between the municipality and the building’s owner.
The OK Building houses, among other things, the municipal customer service centre in Vanderbijlpark. “Even the chief financial officer, Mfareleni Maseanoka, could not provide any answers. Emfuleni is already bankrupt, and the ANC-controlled government has been supporting an unfunded budget for the past six years. Meanwhile, consumers have to pay their electricity and water accounts directly to Eskom and Rand Water,” Van der Lith stated.
“The municipal management does not have the political will to lift the municipality out of its junk status.”
The FF Plus believes the only solution is to remove the ANC from power and establish a new government that puts residents’ needs first.