(Photo: Zakysant via Wikimedia Commons)
The Gauteng treasury has agreed to postpone the presentation of the City of Tshwane’s adjustment budget and the adjusted service delivery and budget implementation plan even further.
This is because the city still does not have a new mayor to approve the budget.
However, a council member believes that it will not make a difference whether the budget is approved now or later.
“There is simply no money available to provide services in Tshwane, whether you accept an adjustment budget or not,” explains Lex Middelberg, councilor of the Republican Conference of Tshwane, a grouping of independent councillors.
The mayorless metro initially asked for a postponement until March 24, but in the meantime realized that time was going to catch up with them and asked for a postponement again.
The adjusted service delivery and budget implementation plan will now be presented on 14 April.
Dr. Corné Mulder, chairman of the coalition monitoring group in Tshwane, says the executive mayor of a metro is the person tasked with “submitting and explaining” the adjustment budget to the city council.
“If there is no executive mayor, there is also no mayor’s committee that, as ministers of local government, can assume responsibility for specific portfolios,” explains Mulder about the delay in presenting the adjustment budget and the ongoing delay in the election of a mayor.
“It’s all tied together.”
Middelberg says that while the presentation of the adjustment budget is being postponed, the amount of unauthorized expenditure is getting higher. “Now money is being spent on things that are not authorized by the budget.
“So it is really just an academic exercise at this stage to reduce the amount of unauthorized expenditure and make the embarrassment smaller during the next audit.”
However, he does not think that the speedy appointment of a mayor – whether it is the DA’s or ANC’s candidate – will make a difference to service delivery in the city.
“What an adjustment budget does is to move funds from portfolios that were underspent in the original budget to portfolios where there was overspending.”
The latest quarterly figures indicate a 5% under-recovery of income in the City of Tshwane.
Middelberg says that after the metro has paid its employees, a mere 4% to 5% of the budget remains, with which services must be provided.
“It is only because of poor budgets in the past that spill over into this year and mean that you pay municipal workers every month to sit and watch for each other, because there is no money for what is needed to deliver the services.
Archive photo (Photo: Unsplash)
“Everything has come to a standstill in this city. All we do now is pay salaries. It doesn’t matter if you are the ANC or the DA, if your expenses are five and your income is four, then you are going backwards.”
Mulder did tell Rhewal on Monday that the postponement of the adjustment budget should not have any impact on the metro’s existing projects. This includes the project to restore water supply in parts of Hammanskraal and Vastfontein.
Rhewal reported this past weekend that the City of Tshwane is obliged by the court to quickly approve a budget to end the lack of water supply in parts of Hammanskraal and Vastfontein.
The court also ordered that a water supply working group be set up in an attempt to supply water to the areas.
Mulder says the working group should be able to continue with their work while waiting for the election of a mayor.
“If there is no mayor, the municipal manager takes over the role. The officials are therefore supposed to continue. However, it is unfortunately the case that if a school is without a head, it is not obvious that teachers will continue to do their work,” admits Mulder.
The election of a new mayor will now hopefully take place on Tuesday during a special council meeting after it was postponed twice before.
