Note to Editors: The following speech has been delivered in the North West Provincial Legislature today by DA Spokesperson on Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs, Freddy Sonakile.
Honourable Speaker, receiving a qualified audit opinion for three consecutive years should set off all alarm bells, but when the Auditor-General awards three qualified opinions and one disclaimer on predetermined objectives, also for three consecutive years, then clearly something is fundamentally wrong.
The continual disclaimed finding on the housing development programme is of great concern. How much longer will this Department have to hear about its lack of proper internal control measures and failure to provide adequate training to improve performance before putting their hand to the plow?
The poorly planned RDP project in Toevlug, Ventersdorp, is but one example of this Department’s inability to provide quality housing to beneficiaries who are in desperate need. The residents of Toevlug have been waiting for almost ten years to receive RDP housing units, but they are left with 360 incomplete houses built too close to the electricity supply cables and sewerage lines.
Raw sewage flows down the streets, posing a serious health hazard. Some residents have sewage dams on their property, making it difficult to access their only water tap and toilet on the premises.
It is still a very sore point that the Human Settlement Development Grant was fully utilized which is the reason why the Department failed to achieve its target under the Housing Development programme. Where did the money go to, MEC?
The people of Toevlug, Matshelapad and Karlien Park have been waiting for at least ten years for decent housing, while the residents of Leekwa Teemane and Boitumelong have been left with defective houses.
209 Military veterans’ housing have been planned for this financial year, but only 39 completed houses were reported by the Department. The worst part is that the Auditor-General discovered that in actual fact only 22 houses has been built, yet the budget is depleted!
Honourable Speaker, this low standard of work is evident of this Department’s indifference towards the people of this province.
Due to this Department’s lack of oversight, effective monitoring and project management, it goes without saying that the North West Housing Corporation under its curatorship is not making strides either.
State-Owned Entities on the brink of bankruptcy is no longer anything new and pointing out the lack of political will to change this culture, has become a broken record.
Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that the North West Housing Corporation received a disclaimed audit opinion. In its predetermined objectives of housing property development and property management, it regressed from previous years.
There is currently a housing backlog of 59% nationally. Through the DA’s efforts in the Western Cape, it has been brought down to 25%. In every financial year, the DA has exceeded their title delivery targets by at least 2000, delivering 103 000 title deeds since 2009.
Speaker, this is commendable and indeed sets an example to other provinces. However, with the overall lack of consequence management and slackness to deal with corruption, this will be a tough act to follow.
Having said all this, and taking into consideration the fact that this Department is under Section 100 intervention, it is no surprise that municipalities are in such a dismal state.
Again, not 1 out of the 22 municipalities in North West were able to obtain a clean audit for this financial year. Water and sewage issues, factionalism, corruption and incompetence of accounting officers has become synonymous with North West municipalities for the past quarter of a century.
That’s right, Speaker, for 25 years the ANC-led government could not succeed in delivering the services they have been promising since the dawn of democracy.
Since 2006 to date, there has been a total of 78 interventions into the 22 municipalities of North West. Evidently, none of these interventions yielded any positive results.
This in itself is cause to concern and begs the question as to why no stronger action has been taken against those who failed the people of this province. Why have municipalities been left to continue in their failure to manage public funds and deliver essential services?
The fact that we have not seen effective consequence management over the years, proves that the Department of Cooperative Governance has failed in its oversight role over municipalities.
The Constitution determines that, when a municipality cannot comply to their statutory obligations such as tabling annual reports, conducting regular portfolio committee sittings, passing unfunded budgets and failing to deliver the most basic services, like most of our municipalities, intervention should be sought.
This then brings us to the point where 15 municipalities are under Section 139(1)(b), but not even such a drastic step was enough to resolve the numerous troubles that these failing entities are faced with.
Speaker, now is the opportune time to speak to the dissolution of Mamusa in terms of Section 139(1)(c). While we welcome this bold move by the Department and EXCO, it raises numerous questions as to why Mamusa has been singled out amid a province inundated with under-performing municipalities. Our only hope is that this Department will explain to the residents the yardstick they used to choose Mamusa over Ditsobotla, Tswaing and many others.
On a radio debate facilitated by Motsweding FM on 31st of October 2019, one of the panellists asked MEC Kegakilwe why Ditsobotla was not included in the 139(1)(c) intervention, as there is a total collapse of service delivery, with the army even collecting their garbage. The MEC responded with a number of reasons which included that Ditsobotla has improved on its utilization of Municipal Infrastructure Grant. The panellist asked him to identify where the MIG he was referring to was utilized and for what. The MEC said it was utilized on internal roads. The panellist accused the MEC of misleading the public and told him to explain where exactly in Ditsobotla roads were maintained. The MEC could not answer. The debate ended with that question unanswered. This might prove that the MEC and EXCO play politics with these interventions.
This Department erroneously paid the Bojanala Platinum District Municipality an amount of R134 million – the MEC said it was a human error. As if we had expected a robot error. He also said a further investigation will be conducted. The MEC, Ubabes we ma Investigations, is forever referring to investigations where he has to act decisively. He seems to be under the illusion that one can’t institute criminal charges against alleged wrongdoing before doing any investigation. There is a lot of nursing criminality by this Department.
Isn’t it also suspicious that the R134 million was “erroneously” sent a few days before the financial year end? This might be a ploy of sending money “erroneously” to municipalities before the end of financial year, so that it appears as if it had been utilized when reporting for that financial year, then later going back to the municipality in the new financial year to claim it back and not report it.
Hierdie is ‘n kroekspul, Speaker!