Africa-Press – South-Africa. KwaZulu-Natal Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube says officials and politicians who think municipalities belong to them and their families must face action.
“Maybe we have been too soft dealing with some transgressions and wrongdoings in our municipalities,” she said on Tuesday.
She was speaking at the public works department building in Mayville, Durban, where her office gathered officials from municipalities that had negative outcomes from recent Auditor-General (AG) reports.
“I don’t think it is good for any of us in the province that, when Parliament meets, we are in the back of the pack because we are not managing public finances in the correct manner,” she told the leaders of poorly performing municipalities.
Dube-Ncube added: “We want to work with you, but where there is resistance, I can assure you we will give you the full might of the law.”
Municipalities had to have proper plans going forward, she said.
“We are required to report back to the commitments we made with the AG in terms of how we will fulfil our mandate in terms of support and intervention.”
Dube-Ncube said she was disappointed that many municipalities had approved budgets that were unfunded.
“That is a no-no. That is illegal, you cannot approve an unfunded budget, according to the Municipal Finance Management Act.”
The disbanding of Umzinyathi
Dube-Ncube said she was concerned with the Umzinyathi District Municipality, saying the province had been concerned with its performance since 2016.
“I asked [the] MEC [of] Cogta what will it take to disband it. We cannot have a municipality not meeting their mandate since 2016. Their budget is unfunded and the state of the municipality in terms of the AG report is worse than before. Also, interventions given are not yielding results.”
She said there were also issues in the Umkhanyakhude District Municipality as well as the Msunduzi and Mpofana Municipalities.
“If we are giving you interventions that are not helping you, you should say this is not helping,” she added.
She said that, while some progress was made in Msunduzi, it had “since regressed”.
“Clean audits are what we want. We want you to cooperate and work with us. We know the road to recovery will be challenging, but we have committed to working with you.”
A number of KZN municipalities, including its only metro, eThekwini, have received scathing accounts of their management of funds.
In eThekwini, the AG found that several councillors failed to declare interest in companies doing business with the City.
The national cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) department this week reported that a skills audit report indicated that 298 of the 1 944 councillors in KZN couldn’t read or write, with 33% asking the government to teach them.
The report was compiled as a skills audit by KZN’s Cogta department.
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