There is no definite answer yet on whether Mr Theo van Vuuren, city administrator, is staying on or not.
The decision on the extension of the intervention has been taken for Bushbuck Ridge for three months, while the period required for Emalahleni is still subject to a decision by government.
Mr Zibonele Mncwango, spokesperson for the office of the premier, said government is satisfied with the strides taken in Emalahleni. However there are still issues that need to be overseen before any final decision can be made.
“The Executive Committee requested a report from the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs and Emalahleni Local Municipality. The report has to focus on the aging infrastructure in the municipality and service delivery problems experienced especially in the informal settlements,” Mncwango said.
He said the Executive Committee will again sit on Wednesday, September 3 when the report will be discussed.
The Democratic Alliance still questions the progress made in the municipality.
“What is questionable is that the Executive Council of Mpumalanga has indicated that they are pleased with the progress made in the municipalities, despite the fact that they admit there are still leadership and administrative matters to be resolved, before interventions are lifted,” they said in a press release.
The party sternly hammered on service delivery issues and said, “It is clear that the turnaround strategies for these municipalities are not working. We have witnessed very little improvement in service delivery and management of these municipalities under the guide of the administrators.”
According to the party, the provincial government cannot extend the administrator’s term infinitely as the duly elected leadership of those councils must be given the responsibility of running the municipality.
“During the period of administration, the administrator reports directly to the MEC and the executive powers of the elected leadership are suspended. It is a known fact that the ANC is extremely divided in both these municipalities and the MEC cannot use the extension of the term for administrators to buy time while the ANC tries to sort out its internal political mess.”
They wrapped their press release up by calling on the MEC to announce a sunset date for the administrations, not only to table a progress report on Section 139 intervention in the Provincial Legislature, but to put in place an exit strategy for each of the administrators.
The man himself, Van Vuuren, reacted on DA’s statements: “The DA press statement indicates their view that there has been very little progress with the interventions. It also calls on the intervention to be stopped. This is an interesting development as the DA claimed the credit for the introduction of the intervention in eMalahleni last year April. At that stage they argued that service delivery failure required intervention and that the elected council could not cope.”
He does not agree with the DA’s stand that little or no progress was made in the municipality: “I am not a politician and find these changes in directions sometimes interesting. From a technical point of view I will however disagree with the statements that no or little progress has been made.”
“While these different and changing view points are expressed, the administration team together with staff and the council will continue to work towards improving service delivery and judged by the thousands of comments in the social media we are doing something right as well.”
