by Ashor Sarupen MPL – DA Gauteng Spokesperson on Finance
ANC-run local municipalities in Gauteng (Sedibeng, Lesedi, Mogale City and Merafong) are engaged in rampant financial mismanagement and are running on unfunded budgets until the end of the 2017/18 financial year.
The DA previously revealed that ANC mismanagement in Mogale City, Merafong and Emfuleni saw these municipalities failing to meet their financial obligations to Eskom and Rand Water which has run into hundreds of millions of Rands.
As a result, they have had to enter into payment arrangements to keep the lights on and the taps running.
The trend of financial mismanagement by the ANC where it governs in Gauteng appears to be pervasive and persistent.
Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene recently revealed in parliament that the Sedibeng, Lesedi, Mogale City and Merafong City local municipalities collectively only have R343-million in cash to meet the financial obligations of R806-million by the end of the second quarter of the 2017/18 municipal financial year.
All four of these municipalities have adopted unfunded budgets – intending on spending money they do not have and cannot raise. The financial situation in Mogale City, where the ANC dubiously ousted a DA-led coalition, is already so dire that the municipality has a cash balance of negative R16-million.
More disturbingly, none of these financially distressed ANC municipalities have tabled approved financial recovery plans to get out of the mess they have put themselves in.
It appears that the ANC in Gauteng are totally disinterested in good governance, as they are not holding their mayors, finance MMCs and cadre deployed officials to account for this dire situation.
Continued ANC rule in both the province and these municipalities will lead them down the road to total financial ruin. Only Total Change in Gauteng will allow the province to have a fiscally sustainable future.
The DA will be tabling questions to Gauteng Finance MEC Barbara Creecy as to how she allows this to persist, and if necessary, we will call on her to implement section 139(5) of the Constitution to stabilize the finances of these municipalities for the benefit of residents who have been forgotten by the ANC.