Port St Johns municipality wants to outsource its debt collection and administration.
Mayor Nomvuzo Mlombile-Cingo said a long Samwu strike last year had starved the municipality of revenue.
In January, the mayor told a public meeting the municipality was thinking of hiring a private company to do their debt collection.
On Monday, municipal bosses called for private companies to design a revenue collection strategy.
The mayor told the Dispatch on the phone that another reason for the outsourcing was that her officials were incompetent.
Mlombile-Cingo said: “We have officials but the problem is that they don’t do this properly.
“They are not competent enough on this [revenue collection].”
A notice inviting interested companies to bid for the tender was advertised in the Dispatch on Monday. It called for a service provider to render a revenue enhancement strategy for a period of three years.
Mlombile-Cingo said the municipality had been crippled by a seven-month workers’ strike between December 2017 and July 2018. “We lost of a lot of revenue during the strike,” she said. “It really affected service delivery. And when you go to people asking them to pay for services they refuse, saying they did not receive any.”
Opposition parties in council and worker union Samwu lambasted the decision saying it was “a waste of money”.
Asked if the decision had been taken to council for approval, the mayor said there was no council resolution on the matter except that it was part of an administrative responsibility to try and turn the situation around.
“Revenue is a huge problem. We are limping because we are not collecting enough revenue, hence the decision to enlist a service provider to help.”
Mlombile-Cingo could not divulge how much had been set aside by the municipality for the three-year tender, saying the companies that were going to bid should not see the amount allocated, as they would use that knowledge to bid closer to the amount.
“I have been advised that for now we should keep it [amount involved] a secret,” she added.
Samwu’s PSJ chair, Amos Nothobela, reacted with shock at the news that the municipality had decided to outsource and said it was the municipality’s responsibility to capacitate its own workers.
“If you see a gap in workers’ skills it’s your job to capacitate them.”
He said the municipality did not have a skills transfer plan to ensure that whatever skills were brought by a private company were then transferred to municipal staff.
“We will definitely follow up on this. It’s a waste of money.”
A DA councillor in PSJ, Derrick Madini, said they would fight the decision to outsource, which he also slammed as a waste of money.
He said they were unhappy that the issue had not been tabled in council and they were left in the dark.
“It’s unlawful, and it’s wasteful expenditure.
“The sad part is that when the auditor-general enquires about it, no one will know,” he said.
UDM whip Lennox Hlatywa said: “Maybe it’s an administrative thing. Maybe they will bring it to council later.”
He lamented the slowness of service delivery in the municipality.
The Dispatch reported earlier this year that Mlombile-Cingo, while addressing a media and stakeholder engagement session, had voiced her concern that the municipality was generating very little revenue.
“It's just too small,” she said at the time...