Republican Conference of Tshwane’s councillor Lex Middelberg. Picture: File
Pretoria - Republican Conference of Tshwane’s councillor Lex Middelberg has rubbished claims of looming threats to place the City of Tshwane under administration due to failure by council to pass an adjustment budget last week.
Middelberg said a municipality wasn’t under obligation to pass an adjustments budget, saying it may do so at its discretion.
“A municipality is by law obliged to spend money in accordance with its budget. Spending that is not authorised by the budget is financial misconduct and unlawful.”
He said the budget was never about better services, but “it was always all about allocating a budget to fix the unlawful expenditure already incurred”.
Executive mayor Cilliers Brink recently raised concern that the latest developments in council, such as adjournments of meetings, was an attempt to create conditions to place the municipality under administration.
Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Mzi Khumalo said the situation had since placed the municipality at risk of being put under administration as one of the optional interventions to be explored by the government.
Middelberg said claims of potential threats that the Gauteng provincial government might take over the metro’s administration were “bogeymen of the coalition’s imagination”.
He said the coalition had told opposition councillors that they may lose their jobs when administration was imposed due to their failure to vote for the budget.
Middelberg, who voted against the budget, said: “If this budget had been allowed to pass, less money would have been spent on your needs and services for the remainder of this year, while the money taken from real service delivery would have been spent mainly to legitimise, by stealth, the unauthorised expenditure that had already been incurred and to expand the comforts of the bloated administration.”
For example, he said, the budget for roads and transport used for maintaining roads and fixing potholes would have been cut by R45 million.
The budget for maintaining water reticulation and fixing pipe bursts under water and sanitation would have been cut by R72.5m.
Middelberg said the budget for energy and electricity responsible for rebuilding substations like Wapadrand and maintaining the electricity grid was to be cut by a whopping R100m.
“The Tshwane Metro Police Department budget was to be cut by R22.5m.”
Both the EFF and ANC refused to support the budget adjustments.
EFF’s chief whip Godwin Ratikwane accused the multiparty coalition of “taking our funds from the township and redirecting it to suburban areas”.
ANC’s France Boshielo said the budget was another attack on the poor residents in townships.
This week, Brink said the adjustment budget was a tool to adjust the city’s spending priorities, but “it is not like we won’t have money. The big risk is that we would incur unauthorised expenditure because the adjustment budget hasn’t been passed.”
He has nevertheless made a formal request for a permission from Khumalo to table the budget again at the end of this month.
Pretoria News