Amathole district municipality is on the brink of collapse as 49% of its R1.5-billion annual budget goes towards its ever-ballooning salary bill.
Added to this, ADM municipal manager Thandekile Mnyimba is drowning in lawsuits from creditors.
This was the gloomy picture painted by Mnyimba on Friday as he addressed workers in East London.
He told the livid workers – whom he has been at loggerheads with since he was appointed as the accounting officer last year in June – at the packed Calvary Christian Centre (formerly Quigney Baptist Church) that the municipality was useless and warned that as long as they did not improve service delivery, residents would continue to protest.
“The ADM is on its knees,” he said.
Mnyimba had called the meeting in an attempt to clear up some pressing aspects of the municipality’s performance and the financial constraints it is facing.
He said the salary bill stood at a shocking R745-million, which is on the scale of a metropolitan municipality. During the next financial year, the bill would escalate to about R800-million, he added.
The municipality – which services Mbhashe, Mnquma, Raymond Mhlaba, Amahlathi, Great Kei and Ngqushwa local municipalities – consists of 80% rural and 20% urban areas – meaning most of its residents are indigent and cannot pay rates.
The municipality gets most of its revenue from national government grants.
“The whole equitable share pays salaries. No amount from this money goes to service delivery, meaning that we do not exist to service our people – we exist to pay salaries. That is why you will hear that we are an employment agency, which is not far from [the] truth because we are not what we are supposed to be,” he said, to some murmuring from the workers.
“Colleagues, we only exist because we exist, but in the true sense of the word, we are useless. As a collective we are useless in the eyes of our people because we are not responding to their needs and that is the reality we should accept.”“Amathole is a category 6 municipality but the administration is paid on a category 7, one scale higher. The 2013-14 reconfiguration of municipalities has killed this municipality,” Mnyimba said.
At the time of writing yesterday, the municipality had not responded to questions sent on Friday as to why it paid its employees at the level of a metro.
Contacted for comment, the South African Municipal Workers’ Union Amathole regional secretary Lona Lubedu said she could not yet comment on the issues affecting the municipality as the union leadership would only be convening today.
The accounting officer warned that people would continue to protest because officials were enjoying the comfort of their air-conditioned offices instead of attending to service delivery.
During the 2016-17 financial year, the beleaguered municipality accumulated a R107-million debt it could not pay the Amathole Water Board.
The municipality also owes the Department of Water and Sanitation R50.6-million, a debt that has been accumulating since 2006.
This resulted in former water and sanitation minister Nomvula Mokonyana threatening to cut the water supply to the municipality last year, although ADM has disputed the amount, saying before making payments, the debt should be reconciled as it had been servicing it.
ADM spokesman Siyabulela Makunga said they had made arrangements to pay the debt, while also enquiring about the historic debt.
The municipality further owes R143-million to service providers who have not been paid since November last year.
“These are the elephants in the room that we are facing. Summonses in my office are piling up because service providers are taking us to court because we have not been paying them and they are sick and tired,” Mnyimba said.
Izwelethu Cemforce CC is suing the ADM and Siyenza for R19-million.
In court papers filed at the Grahamstown High Court, the corporation says it supplied some 3287 VIP toilet structures to Mbhashe and Mnquma regions at R5830 per unit, for which it never received payment from either AMD or Siyenza.
Mnyimba said the municipality was developing two documents – Vision 2058 and one on a municipal turnaround strategy – that would assist and guide the municipality out of its current problems. – siphem@dispatch.co.za..