“I don’t have the people. I don’t have the trucks. I don’t have the equipment.”
These are sobering words of Emfuleni municipal administrator Gilberto Martins detailing the spectacular collapse of service delivery in the Vaal.
Yesterday we reported how Emfuleni municipality is so bankrupt that not only does it owe a combined R4,5bn to Eskom and Rand Water, it owes at least 36 service providers a total of R107m.
“The municipality could not pay people it owed amounts as small as R2,500. Unfortunately, some of these service providers are small businesses. We decided to pay all those we owe small amounts of money. How we do it is that if I owe you R2,000, I easily pay you. If I owe you R10,000 I pay you over three to four months,” Martins told us.
Meanwhile rubbish has piled up, sewage is running down the streets, the roads have collapsed and inconsistent electricity supply has crippled businesses. The situation is not unique to Emfuleni. This is the story of many towns and cities across the country.
Such a collapse of services does not happen instantly, nor does it occur in a vacuum. It is a direct result of consistently bad management and corruption as well as a political culture where there is no accountability.
In the Emfuleni case, the municipality was flagged by the Auditor-General for its R1bn irregular expenditure. That is R1bn spent not in accordance with proper procedure. That alone is a clear demonstration of an institution that has no internal controls in its basic operations.
While we welcome the interventions announced by Cogta MEC Lebogang Maile last week, we must question why its previous recovery plans have failed.
For example, in October parliament’s portfolio committee on Cogta pointed out that 81 matters of emphasis highlighted by the AG in the 2018/19 financial year had still not been dealt with.
This suggests that at best the municipality has no capacity to turn around the situation. At worst it shows that they have no political will to do so.
Either way, what is clear is that a different approach by the provincial government must be taken if we are to see results this time around.
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