Technical difficulties mar Durban municipality’s council budget debate

ETHEKWINI full council adopted the R49-billion budget on Friday night following a contentious virtual meeting.

The virtual meeting was marred by a myriad of technical difficulties and loud background noise from councillors not muting their microphones.

Nicole Graham, Democratic Alliance eThekwini caucus leader, was cut off a number of times when she was speaking.

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Graham accused the city officials of intentionally sabotaging the live feed which prompted the DA to ‘walk out’ of the meeting.

“I asked the speaker to pause the session and sort out the technical difficulties but she was more interested in wanting to move on,” she said.

“We do have to check whether it is constitutional to not allow councillors to speak. You cannot cut duly elected councillors off at will.”

Although the DA didn’t vote, they were poised to vote against the bill due to the high tariffs and “immoral” salary increases for senior city officials.

Belinda Scott, Deputy Mayor of Durban, said they were not prepared to discuss the issue of wages any further with opposition parties.

In his opening address, Mxolisi Kaunda, Durban Mayor focused on the city’s successes in the past four years.

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Kaunda, who was appointed following the stepping down of Zandile Gumede due to corruption charges, said the city will be working hard to root out corruption in its tender systems.

“A turnaround plan, with clear time frames has been developed to address the case backlog of officials who are implicated in wrongdoing with a view of applying consequence management,” he said.

After more than five hours of deliberations, the budget was passed with 126 for and 10 against.

Recommendations of the budget go into effect on 1 July.

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