Municipality ignores council
Piet Liebenberg
DA CONSTITUENCY leader Elza van Lingen said the Kouga Local Municipality (KM) has decided to ignore a council resolution to reduce expected income in the budget for the financial year starting on July 1.
At a council meeting of the Kouga council on May 31, council resolved the budget for 2012/13 should make provision for impairment of 10% for bad debt, and not just 4% as proposed by officials. This means that expenses, like salaries, would have to be reduced accordingly.
In an open letter addressed to the MEC for Government and Traditional Affairs, Mlibo Qoboshiyane, Van Lingen accused the ANC of rejecting the decision to budget 10% for bad debt.
She says: "The decision for the budget to reflect an impairment of 10% of the bad debt of own income has been unanimously endorsed by the 14-member DA caucus of the Kouga municipal council.”
This follows a decision by the municipality's joint standing committee on June 12 to budget for a collection rate of 96% because they were a) not prepared to cut salaries; b) not prepared to cut repairs and maintenance; and c) neither were they prepared to reduce the capital budget. This meeting was only attended by 13 ANC councillors. The 14 members of the DA did not attend because, according to Van Lingen, the revised budget was to have been presented to a full council and not to a joint standing committee.
Van Lingen says: "The current collection rate of Kouga is 71%, and it is unrealistic for the ANC to insist on a collection rate of 96% in the proposed budget for 2012/13.”
She appealed to Qoboshiyane to intervene.
"We officially table this matter with you, that the issue on hand, is that the ANC executive mayor and his mayoral committee may not deviate from the council resolution that a 10% impairment of bad debt be budgeted for,” Van Lingen said.
She further warned that they will hold the municipal manager, Sydney Fadi accountable to "…further reduce the proposed 2012/13 budget by 6% as resolved by council which will then equal a 10% impairment”.
