The Eastern Cape Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) is set to intervene in 14 underperforming municipalities across in the province.
Maladministration and corruption have been identified as major obstacles facing certain municipalities, and these often lead to service delivery lapses.
Xasa was informed of this as part of his visit to Mnquma Local Municipality to assist the embattled municipality on Thursday.
“We want to make them aware that they are part of the 55 municipalities identified by national Cogta and national Treasury as part of the distressed municipalities across the country. There are 14 of them in the province that are part of the project.”The department will conduct an assessment on the municipality, and Xasa promised to provide much-needed intervention.“We want to introduce the team that will conduct an assessment of the situation and to respond to some of the issues they have identified which require attention. We are actually setting up teams that will be joined by Cogta nationally.”
Xasa said they would show zero tolerance for corrupt municipal officials.
“We also raised issues about the management of finances of the municipality and those officials who were charged. They have indicated that most of the people who were arrested are no longer at Mnquna and most of the managers here are new.
“Our message is very clear: the message from the president is that we are not going to tolerate corruption.”
Critical issues discussed at this week’s meeting included the municipality’s underperformance when it came to spending its infrastructure grant.
“We will have people technically competent to assist the municipality to spend on infrastructure. We no longer want to take away the infrastructure grant because the municipality is underspending. We will assist them to spend so that we do not punish communities on the basis that their municipality has no capacity.”
He said: “There will be engineers who will assist, depending on the assessment. We want people who must come and access, and if there are skills required they must source that skill. We do not want them to return money.”
Municipal manager, Silumko Mahlasela, welcomed the MEC’s visit. “We looked at the issues that were raised by the auditor-general related to irregular expenditure, and issues of service delivery, and we sat down and developed an action plan and how we should be corrected going forward.”
The action plan, seen by the Daily Dispatch, includes investigating allegations of fraud, corruption and maladministration, filling of critical posts within the municipality by the end of August and to mobilise communities for greater citizen participation in local government.
The action plan will be tabled in a council meeting on June 29.
“For those implicated in issues of corruption, their processes are continuing and some of them are no longer working for municipality, and for those that still remain, they await the processes of disciplinary hearing.
“Previously there were issues of political instability and maladministration but, over the past two to three months, the situation has come to an end. Politicians have come together to achieve a common goal,” Mahlasela said...