by: Councillor Pieter Malan, DA Councillor: Rustenburg Local Municipality
The Rustenburg Local Municipality’s budget for the 2020/21 financial year tabled in Council last week fails to address the current socio-economic realities brought about by years of financial mismanagement, poor governance and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will interrogate the budget tabled and propose amendments that will ensure that adequate funding is made available to ensure the delivery of services and infrastructure maintenance. The proposed budget only allocates about 2% of total revenue towards maintenance, 6 percentage points below the recommended Treasury guidelines of at least 8%.
Considering the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown and the negative economic impact on residents and businesses, especially with regards to business closures and retrenchments, the budget’s own revenue projection is overestimated. This means that the municipality will experience a severe cashflow problem if it utilises inflated own revenue projections to fund the budget.
We can already safely assume that many residents and small business are unable to pay their municipal accounts due to the economic downturn. Already the municipality under collects revenue by an estimated R50 million a month.
The municipality’s debtors book currently stands in excess of R5,6 billion in uncollected revenue. This is a strong indication that the own revenue projection in the budget is overestimated. The DA will also call for the aged debtors book to be scrutinised by an independent debt collection agency in a bid to recover as much of the outstanding debt as possible, and only when all possible avenues for debt recovery has been exhausted, consider writing off irrecoverable debt on a case by case basis after a proper report has been presented.
The DA in Rustenburg will not support the blanket write off of aged debt.
Considering the harsh economic times we find ourselves in, the DA will propose several amendments to the budget to redirect funding towards improving service delivery and to make funding available towards offering relief support to residents who are unable to pay their municipal accounts due to retrenchments or substantial loss of income as a result of reduced salaries due to the impact pf lockdown.
We also cannot support an increase in rates and taxes for the next financial year and neither can we support salary increases for politicians and municipal officials. These measures will offer some relief to financially overburdened residents.
In addition, we will also recommend that the municipality’s indigency register be updated, to ensure that those residents who are completely financially destitute, can have access to legally connected free basic electricity and water supply.
The budget is now undergoing a public participation process and will serve before Council in due course to be voted on and adopted. The DA in Rustenburg hopes that our proposals for budgetary amendments will be received in good faith to the benefit of the people. It is now more important than ever to ensure the municipality’s budget puts the people first.
Media Enquiries:
Cllr Pieter Malan
DA Councillor: Rustenburg Local Municipality
082 801 5038
CJ Steyl
DA North West Acting Provincial Campaigns Director
078 652 5284