DEAR Editor,-
Some funny things happened in Port Sheptsone last Thursday (March 24). The Ugu District Council held its monthly meeting at 11 am. When the DA caucus arrived at 10am to finalise which issues should be raised in council and who would speak, they were denied access to the chamber. There was a ring of steel around the building and SAPS vehicles blocking a lane in the street. A dozen private security officers, some of them armed with shotguns and rifles, lined the pathway to the entrance to the building. Two SAPS officers stood guard close to the door.
I enquired as to what was happening and was told that a provincial MEC was holding a meeting inside the council chambers. Then I was told that two MECs were present. I was then informed that the meeting was about taxis! We know that MECs sometimes travel in blue light cavalcades with several vehicles in a line. I do not know how many personal MEC bodyguards were inside the chamber.
The draft budget for the 2016/2017 year was tabled at the meeting, as required by law, it was revealed that Ugu’s annual budget would rise from R1.2 billion to R1.3 billion. As a sop to voters in an election year, water tariffs would rise by only 5.7 percent, whilst there would be no increase at all in sanitation tariffs.
The capital budget for the year suffered a sharp drop from R410-million to R368-million (R42-million). This was because the total grants from central government for capital projects was reduced by 56-million for the year to come. Ugu itself cannot put in much as 58 percent of the money received from the sale of water and sanitation is used for salaries. This is despite the blue drop report for the provision of water service in municipalities revealing that Ugu’s provision of water services has dropped from 94 percent in 2009 to only 66 percent in 2014.
The green drop report on sanitation makes for no better reading. Ugu and Sizonke (Kokstad) municipalities were singled out as having the highest risk waste water treatment plants in KZN, with many plants being in high and critical positions in this regard. These two reports are about Ugu’s core business.
The revised capital budget for 2016/2017 also revealed that executive and council had increased their modest budget from R54 500 to R2.2-million – an increase of something like 400 percent. When I asked what this was about, I was told that some of it was to provide for the purchase of a chain and gown for the mayor.
The purchase of this paraphernalia, so reminiscent of the colonial past and its pomp and ceremony, which has been claimed by President Zuma as causing all the trouble in South Africa (occasioned in the first instance by Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival at the Cape), is somewhat ironic. Voters are asked to consider that, when Ugu’s capacity to raise the low quality of its core business of water and sanitation provision is hampered by lack of funds, how this pie should be divided.
DD SNASHALL
Ugu Councillor
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