Battle brews over municipality’s missing millions

A dispute has erupted between Bushbuckridge local municipality and the two government departments which reportedly failed to pay their debts of about R1 billion.

Bushbuckridge municipal spokesperson Fhumulani Thovhakale said out of the about R1 billion outstanding payment for the services, the provincial department of public works, roads and transport (DPW) owed R675 million, while the department of rural development and land reform owed more than R327 million.

“Money owed to the municipality affects delivery of services to the communities and weakens the municipality’s ability to function,” said Thovhakale.

Bushbuckridge owed about R1 billion

He said the municipality would continue implementing its credit control and debt management policies to recoup the outstanding funds.

DPW spokesperson Bongani Dlamini said he was aware of the debts, but denied that the department owed R675 million.

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“The amount owed is R188 million. The department is currently consolidating all debts and making payment arrangements,” said Dlamini.

Political head of the DA in Bushbuckridge, Tersia Marshall, said: “We condemn this failure to settle municipal debt, which has compromised the ability to deliver essential services, particularly water and road maintenance.

“We are demanding engagement between the departments and the municipality to develop a sustainable debt repayment plan. We also demand a consistent and timely payment of all future municipal accounts to prevent further debt accumulation.

Failure to settle municipal debt condemned

“We demand a comprehensive written explanation from the departments outlining the reasons for nonpayment and remedial steps being taken to resolve this financial neglect.”

Rural development spokesperson Zithini Dlamini said the department was not aware of the outstanding payments.

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She said the department has requested the municipality to provide a breakdown on the alleged amount owed by the department.

“The department can’t confirm whether it’s true or not until the municipality has provided us with proof of the alleged amount owed. As a department, we do pay any amount which is billed and invoiced correctly,” she said.

A source told The Citizen one of the reasons the government departments were reluctant to pay was because there was always a dispute as municipalities throughout the country had tendencies of intentionally overcharging departments for “corruption purposes”.

Tendencies of intentionally overcharging for “corruption purposes”

“Recently, we discovered that some municipalities, including Bushbuckridge, have inflated the size of the properties, where you find a 200m2 plot is 220 000m2, and a two-hectare farm that’s 50 hectares or 100 hectares,” said the source.

“For most of the time, the department has been paying such amounts, which means the municipality has been defrauding the public works department. This is not a Mpumalanga problem as it happens nationally.”

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Political analyst Goodenough Mashego urged authorities to investigate and establish how the departments failed to pay the municipality and also to find out why some of the departments were disputing the amounts owed.

“It is a fact the municipality is being owned and the departments are refusing to pay some of the outstanding monies,” Mashego said.

“We don’t know how the municipality calculated the debts. The implications of not paying are quite obvious because revenue raised by municipalities goes into funding service delivery.

How is municipality calculating debt?

“You must understand that Bushbuckridge is a poor municipality that needs money from different sources to fund its service delivery projects.”

Mashego said the entities must find a way of fixing the problem because the community will suffer.

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Political analyst Prof Ntsikelelo Breakfast called on the three government entities to sort the matter out as it affects service delivery.

Breakfast said according to the law, government institutions are supposed to work well together and prioritise service delivery, instead of failing one another.

“Sometimes problems like this are caused by leaders from the same party or different parties sabotaging one another,” said Breakfast.

Sort out the matter, it affects service delivery

“We have seen things like these happening in most cases, especially now that we have the government of national unity, we are going to see more of it.

“And that is not how it was supposed to be because once you work for the government you must forget about party politics or factionalism and work towards a common goal of offering services to the public.”

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