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Out of all the eight metros in the country the Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) Municipality has been ranked the worst-performing in terms of revenue collection and spending.
Based in Port Elizabeth, the NMB is the largest in the Eastern Cape, followed by the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality in East London. The two are the only metros in the province.
Leander Kruger, spokesperson for the municipal budget and treasury in the DA, the main opposition, said the NMB was ranked worst performing in terms of aggregate revenue collection, at 85% of budgeted revenue, as well as worst-performing in terms of expenditure, at 83.2% of budgeted expenditure. The statistics form part of the National Treasury’s preliminary report of Local Government Revenue and Expenditure Results released earlier this month.
“The sad state of affairs is compounded by repeated warnings from the National Treasury that no roll-over of grant funding to the Metro will be approved unless there is a permanently appointed chief financial officer.
“As a result, the metro stands to lose about R500 million in roll-over grant funding. Instead of calling a council meeting to appoint a chief financial officer, the Speaker of Council placed the council in recess for an unprecedented five-week period,” said Kruger.
He said while residents of the metro were desperate for service delivery, the current coalition government – which includes the United Democratic Movement (UDM), the ANC, the African Independent Congress, the United Democratic Front and the EFF – was unable to collect revenue or to fully spend the money it does collect.
“While these figures are subject to a final auditing process by the Auditor-General, there can be no doubt that the municipality’s finances are unstable and steadily declining. This, in turn, will contribute to deteriorating service delivery and economic growth that’s desperately needed to create jobs.
“The current poor state of affairs is in stark contrast to the positive financial position the metro experienced while under a DA-led coalition government,” Kruger said, adding that the metro was failing its residents because it could not deliver even the most basic services.
He said the city had turned out to be worse after the DA-led coalition was taken out of power when the ANC and other small opposition parties decided to push them into the opposition benches.
After the 2016 local government elections, when there was no outright majority winning the tightly contested NMB, the DA formed a coalition with the African Christian Democratic Party, Cope and the UDM, assisted with votes by the EFF. But after a fallout between former mayor Athol Trollip and his then deputy mayor Mongameli Bobani, the former broke ranks and formed a new coalition led by the UDM, with Bobani as mayor.
Kruger said things were not going well at the metro. “The city is dirty. Illegal dumping is on the rise. Refuse collection is not regular. Our parks are not being cleaned. There was a scare about the cleanliness of water. Services are not being delivered to the level that they should be and it is not in one community only, but throughout the city. It is across the board that services are not being delivered,” he said.
NMB mayoral spokesperson George Geleba said the DA was working day and night to make sure that the current coalition government did not fulfil its constitutional obligations.
“They are at the centre of all that they accuse us of doing, as they do not play their critical part in attending council. If the DA cared, we would be having permanent senior managers by now, including the chief financial officer, but they refuse to attend council meetings.
“However, we will not be derailed. We are working with the committed staff of this municipality to make sure that we improve our systems and our collection rate. I will not dwell much on the details, as we still have to look at these reports as a coalition. It must be noted that we have confidence in member of the mayoral committee for budget and treasury councillor Mkhuseli Mtsila that our treasury is in good hands,” said Geleba.
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