‘Broke’ Emfuleni municipality spent over R378m on overtime pay

'It is worrying that this municipality which is facing a serious cash flow problem continues to pay a ridiculous amount of money for employees’ overtime,' the party said.

Emfuleni freezes all procurement amid claims of mismanagement

Emfuleni Local Municipality building in Vanderbijlpark, south of Johannesburg. Picture: Nigel Sibanda

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng says it is shocked to learn that the Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) has spent over R378 million on employees’ overtime for the past five years.

DA MPL Kingsol Chabalala said that this information was recently revealed by the Gauteng MEC for cooperative governance and traditional affairs Lebogang Maile in the provincial legislature .

Chabalala, who is the Emfuleni North constituency head, said that according to Maile, the following monies has been spent on employees’ overtime in the last five financial years:

2015-2016- R61 441 458,08
2016-2017- R76 800 147,68
2017-2018- R68 619 491,80
2018-2019- R80 975 953,56
2019-2020- R90 695 761,49

Chabalala said that in total, the municipality has paid R378 532 812,61 on employees for overtime in the last five financial years.

Furthermore, Emfuleni has paid the following monies to employees for overtime in four months of the national lockdown:

May 2020 – R6 810 189,07
June 2020- R8 771 092,07
July 2020- R7 060 115,67
August 2020- R6 641 669,32

In total, Emfuleni has paid R 29 283 066, 01 on employees’ overtime in four months of the national lockdown.

“It is worrying that this municipality, which is facing a serious cash flow problem continues to pay a ridiculous amount of money for employees’ overtime.

“While we understand that there are situations where the employees must work overtime, however, considering that this municipality is broke, it should have initiated a better way of compensating employees for overtime worked.”

Chabalala further said that this money could have been used to ensure that basic services are rendered to Emfuleni residents by paying debt owed to service providers such as Eskom and Rand Water.

“It is concerning that employees are paid overtime while service delivery has collapsed in Emfuleni. It has now become the norm where the ANC governs to spend ridiculous amounts on employees while the residents suffer from a lack of adequate service delivery.”

The DA called on Maile to urgently intervene and implement other ways of compensating the employees for overtime as part of his interventions to save the municipality.

“The MEC should ensure that Emfuleni’s finances are spent wisely for the benefit of its residents. We will also table follow-up questions to ascertain which departments are paying employees’ overtime and how much per employee is being paid.”