The DA has called for the establishment of an independent management centre in the City of Johannesburg with the capacity to exhaust budgets for capital projects in time.
In a statement released to Fourways Review, the DA councillor and shadow member of the Mayoral Committee for Development Planning, Annette Deppe expressed concern over the current management’s failure to complete projects.
“This centre must facilitate timeous spending of Capital Expenditure (Capex) to ensure the completion of projects, as development is of crucial and paramount importance to the economic growth of any city,” she said.
Speaking at the DA’s post-budget debate, Deppe said that since 2011, the City of Johannesburg had not reached their Capex budgetary targets timeously, adding that a vast amount of expenditure had to be crammed into the last quarter of each year in order to meet budgetary requirements and prevent funds from being returned to the National Treasury.
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“There is little evidence of proper planning, so work is not ongoing on a progressive basis, but rushed at the last minute. This places tremendous pressure on project management and on all the departments concerned. We are in the last quarter of the 2015/2016 financial year and, once again, we have not reached our Capex targets,” said Deppe.
Deppe divulged that millions of rand of this year’s grant had to be returned to the National Treasury after the City failed to utilise it. “Of this year’s annual budget, R100 million in grant payments had to be returned because of under-expenditure, reducing the amount available from R349-million to R249-million.
“This is unacceptable when our citizens are crying out for service delivery and infrastructural development. We sincerely hope that the R453 million allocated for the 2016/2017 budget period (and the R1.5-billion allocated over the next three years) does not meet the same fate. The department needs to ensure that progressive, planned Capex is allocated and spent over the coming 12 months.”
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The councillor lamented the snail’s pace spending in the council and also pointed out that the Johannesburg Development Agency had only spent R148 million out of the R409 million, despite being in the third quarter of the current financial year.
“Once again, we are seeing a rush to spend the money in order to meet budgetary requirements before year-end. Every year since 2011, we have been promised that the Department of Development Planning and the agency will set realistic targets for projects and expenditure on a progressive basis – but to no avail.”
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