Moving with speed, Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink has announced a Mayoral committee (Mayco) that will be faced with tough decisions as it steers Tshwane out of its current financial ruins.
Brink, announcing his committee on March 31, said the nine members were focused on recovering Tshwane from bad debt and begin more rigorous oversight in the metro’s daily business affairs.
“We need daily indications on what we collected daily, spent and question late invoices paid by the metro,” Brink said.
He said the core mandate for the team would be to revive the metro’s finances from the more than R20-billion in debt.
“We need to analyse how much we can spend, collect and are paying in supply management systems.
“We need to re-look projects that are not crucial to water, sanitation, waste collection, public cleaning and by-law enforcement and sewage,” Brink said.
“Tshwane cannot fall into a permanent cash-flow crunch. We are behind with Eskom payments, we are behind with payments to contracts.”
He said some Tshwane projects would need to be relooked to see if they provide value and were core to the mandate of a local government.
“If we fail to fix streetlights, clean public spaces, fix potholes – can we still operate an airport on a year-on-year loss? Can we still be engaged in non-crucial projects undertaken by Tshwane?”
These are the tough decisions that the mayor and his Mayco need to make.
The new members of the mayoral committee (Mayco) are:
– Corporate and Shared Services, Cllr Kingsley Wakelin (DA)
– Economic Development and Spatial Planning, Hannes Coetzee (ActionSA)
– Utilities and Regional Operations, Cllr Themba Fosi (DA)
– Environment and Agriculture, Cllr Ziyanda Zwane (IFP)
– Finance, Peter Sutton (DA)
– Roads and Transport, Katlego Mathebe (DA)
– Community Safety, Grandi Theunissen (VF+)
– Social Development, Cllr Peggy De Bruin (ActionSA)
– Human Settlements, Cllr Ofentse Madzebatela (DA)
– Health, Cllr Rina Marx (VF+)
WATCHG: https://youtu.be/NwVTXya748o
Brink said the Mayco would seek to implement a performance management system as the recent Auditor-General report for the last financial year indicated that a lack of political oversight led to maladministration.
“We as politicians do not do asset checks and check if accounting standards are complied with.
“In regards to the previous committee, we relied on legislated reports to the Mayco.”
According to Brink, much of the reports were not factual.
“The information was not supported by fact. Action has since been taken with the Tshwane CFO being dismissed from his duties last year.”
He said the MMCs were too reliant on officials.
“Experience taught us we cannot rely on officials in Tshwane.”
Brink said this system would action some recourse to concerns flagged in the Auditor-Generals findings.
He said this Mayco would be more hands on.
“We will be accused of interfering in administration and not believing reports. There will be instances where officials will be resistant to implementing policy and strategies of political leadership. We will have to have difficult engagements,” he said.
“Our data environment is poor and lacks accurate information – we cannot do performance management. It is time to rectify this to address productivity, value for money in rates, tariffs and charges.”
He said other MMCs priorities would be to:
– reduce the number of unscheduled water and electricity outages, invest in our core infrastructure and mitigate the effects of load-shedding.
– improve basic services pertaining to pothole repairs, streetlight maintenance, grass cutting and public cleaning.
– secure infrastructure assets, main roads and business nodes against criminals by improving the focus and functioning of the Tshwane metro police department.
– instill high levels of productivity and professionalism in City officials through appropriate performance management systems.
Returning finance MMC Peter Sutton said the new role of oversight by the MMCs would not allow for the mismanagement and lack of oversight that was flagged by the Auditor-General to continue.
“There was insufficient political oversight on tabled reports to council and section 79 oversight structure, which were fraudulently prepared.”
He said an independent investigator was initiating forensic investigations on the recent financial statements to ascertain the true financial standing of the metro.
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