DEAR Editor,-
I write to thank Councillor Mondli Chiliza for responding to my letter about Ugu’s poor service delivery. I am delighted to learn that the new chief financial officer has a BCom degree from UKZN. I congratulate him and wish him well as he tackles his new job.
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However, the mayor remains silent on Section 83 of the Municipal Finance Management Act which specifies that the competency levels of ALL professional financial management must meet the prescribed levels. They were all given five years to do it. Perhaps Cllr Chiliza can let us know how many of them actually made the effort to qualify themselves.
He is silent again about the requirements of the Amended Municipal Systems Act which go even further and specify that all officials who report directly to the municipal manager must have relevant skills, expertise, competence and qualifications at NQF level, as prescribed.
If Cllr Chiliza can list their qualifications, it would give some credence to his claim that Ugu takes itself very seriously, and that it is not a ‘Mickey Mouse’ institution (his words not mine).
On the engineering side, the five qualified engineers of France Zama turn out to be technicians and technologists, plus one ‘certified engineer’.
It appears that there is still not a single registered professional engineer, as mentioned in my original letter.
As far as my slack research is concerned, let me point out that because Cllr Chris Human SC carried out his research by visiting faulty waste water plants and because I carried out research into Ugu’s chaotic financial position, DA councillors were expelled from the Water and Sanitation Portfolio Committee and the Finance Committee by reducing the size of the committees.
The ANC achieved this by coming to an arrangement with the IFP and NFP, which also excluded the DA from the Executive Committee by ANC councillors voting in just sufficient numbers to supplement the votes of these two committees.
As for the mayor’s claim that the public has ready access to information is concerned, I, as a councillor, was told that I may not see or read the copies of the Blue and Green Drop Reports circulated by the National Department of Water and Sanitation. I was informed that I had to make an application in terms of a promotion of access to information application.
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When eventually I was given access to the Blue and Green Drop Reports, I saw that the purity of Ugu’s drinking water had dropped to 65 percent, and that three of Ugu’s waste water plants were in a critical state – with most of them having serious problems.
In closing, may I remind the mayor that the Auditor-General’s report of 2016/17 revealed that the unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure incurred by the municipality was not investigated to determine if any person was liable as required by Section 32(2) of the MFMA. Even worse was the damning opinion of the Financial Statements and findings on the report performance information where no opinion at all was expressed, which amounts to a disclaimer in this respect.
DAVE SNASHALL
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