The financial standing of the struggling Umkhanyakude district municipality has been laid bare for the first time, with the new political leadership painting a picture of an entity that is on the brink of collapse.
This was revealed on Friday when the new coalition of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the National Freedom Party (NFP) briefed the media for the first time after taking power from the ANC almost two weeks ago.
Leading the executive committee, the new mayor, Comfort Khumalo from the IFP, told the media that at the present moment, the semi-arid district municipality, which is battling a decades-long water crisis, is owed around R300 million by consumers.
Writing off debt mooted
But because its collection systems have been severely weakened over the years, it may be forced to write off a large portion of the debt.
“With the budget we have, the situation is bad; we are owed a lot of money to the value of R306 million, and we have to come up with strategies on how we are going to collect it. Our collection rate is very low, and having a very low collection rate in Umkhanyakude means that you won’t operate at optimal capacity.
“As a result, with this R306 million, there must be a large bulk of the money owed that should be written off; we might end up fooling ourselves by saying we will collect all this money, yet we won’t. There must be a lot of money to be written off; maybe we will be able to collect R100 million out of the R306 million owed to us,” Khumalo said.
Abused benefits
He also revealed to the media that the district municipality, which is made up of Mtubatuba, Jozini, Big 5 Hlabisa and Umhlabuyalingana local municipalities is facing a crisis of misused overtime and traveling allowances.
He said some employees were claiming overtime that was even above their salaries, saying that means there is a problem and it meant that it was easy for employees to access the money of the municipality.
Furthermore, Khumalo said the municipality is battling a crisis of ill-qualified staff occupying senior positions and commanding better-qualified staff. In that regard, he was echoed by the new municipal manager, Dr Siya Ntuli who said the matter should be speedily resolved so that the staff morale is boosted.
“We have already started a skills audit to know who occupies which position, and what the requirements for that position are in the institution. We have started that programme and we are completing it this week. We have asked the employees to submit their qualifications so that we know about their experience as well.
“I know that this is one of the contentious issues in municipalities, but we said we are going to do it because some of the things that hamper service delivery in municipalities is not having suitable staff to executive and implement the IDP (integrated development programme) and the vision of the council,” Ntuli said, adding that they have started dealing with employees they have found to be occupying positions they don’t qualify for.
Furthermore, Khumalo said it is clear that the municipality’s finances were not properly handled, as it is currently sitting with an irregular expenditure of R4 billion, and that signals a crisis.
Despite all these financial challenges, Khumalo assured the staff that their salaries are secured and would be paid on time when they become due.
