Mvoko flags municipalities’ slow spending of disaster funds

Eastern Cape finance MEC Mlungisi Mvoko has expressed concern about municipalities that fail to timeously spend disaster funds released to them by the national government.

Speaking to the Daily Dispatch after his budget speech, Mvoko said municipalities were part of the spending problems faced by the Eastern Cape government.

He questioned how local authorities failed to spend disaster relief funds on time when they were given leeway to bypass normal tender processes when spending the funds.

“I was looking at the disaster money, R658m, the premier [Oscar Mabuyane] asked me two days ago, ‘how are we spending?’

“And I was saying to the premier, there are a few municipalities like your Chris Hani district, like your Inxuba [Yethemba], those municipalities are spending.

“But you can’t say the same of all the other municipalities,” Mvoko said. 

He cited municipalities such as Port St Johns.

“They have yet to spend the R1.9m ... this is the [amount] allocated from July. They have yet to spend ... 15%.”

He said Ntabankulu, by the end of October, had only spent R6m of the R16m it had received.

“Kouga, normally Kouga performs better, but now they have yet to spend 86%. They have only spent 14% of what they received. Blue Crane has spent 16%.

“So these are the municipalities we are concerned about. Mnquma has spent only 17%. They received about R4m,” he said.

Mvoko said the Ngqushwa municipality was among those he was also worried about after it only managed to spend 47% of its allocation.

“It’s a serious challenge this issue of [disaster funds] ... others have already written letters to the National Treasury and [co-operative governance & traditional affairs],” he said.

Asked if the municipalities lacked capacity to spend the disaster funds allocated to them, Mvoko agreed.

“When it comes to disaster, you don’t follow normal procurement processes ... this is what the premier is asking about.

“I think the capacity of the municipalities, the capacity of the budget and Treasury of the municipality, together with the [department of] infrastructure, that’s where there [lack of] capacity is.

“If you can go to them, we can bring them together now, they will tell you that we have not paid the outstanding receipts,” he said.

The province has been one of the hardest hit by disasters in the past three years, with flooding the biggest problem.

Areas such as Port St Johns and parts of the Chris Hani district municipality have being repeatedly affected by floods.

This year, informal settlements in Komani had to be permanently relocated because of flooding.

The ruling ANC in the province previously complained about the slow pace at which the national government released flood relief funds.

Addressing the general problem of slow spending in the provincial government, Mvoko pointed to the departments of human settlements, public works & infrastructure, and health.

Speaking about the spending cuts imposed by the national government, Mvoko said they had seriously affected the province.

He said departments had been instructed to re-examine their organograms. 

Mvoko explained that his department wanted to ensure that only posts that related to the core mandate of departments were filled.

“You can only fill posts that are funded but before you fill posts, send something to us so that we can look at what you are proposing and then assess it as Treasury.”

“For instance in education ... or health for that matter, what is the core ...? [The review of the organogram] would mean that you can’t be coming up with more posts on the administration rather than the core, which in the health side of it ... is your nurses and your doctors.”

He said the same applied to the department of education.