Mangaung metro scrambles to avoid dissolution after Parliament warning

The Mangaung municipality will be compiling a comprehensive report at its next council sitting, on Thursday, on how to improve the city after Parliament threatened to dissolve the metro should it continue to fail to present such a report, impacting on service delivery.

Despite the municipality having been given time to compile a report, it “disrespected the portfolio committee on cooperative governance and traditional affairs [Cogta]” by arriving unprepared at their recent meeting, Parliament said.

Mangaung municipality council speaker Stefanie Lockman-Naidoo confirmed that the council had met the portfolio committee.

“The mayor and acting city manager will be preparing a comprehensive report in the next sitting,” she told The Citizen.

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The municipality has been hampered by water and sewerage issues and poor service delivery.

The Citizen recently reported on the bizarre appointment of 105 political bearers who have never clocked in for work, but cost the city R2.5 million in salaries.

The issue then came to the attention of Parliament.

Cogta recently met the provincial executive and the municipality for an update on its performance in terms of Section 139(5)(a) and (c) of the constitution, which governs executive and legislative functions of councils.

The committee had expected a comprehensive report from Mangaung on the latest progress in improving the state of the city, including the functionality of the council, the financial status of the metro, the expenditure trends and revenue collection, the establishment of metro police and the delivery of projects related to water and roads infrastructure.

But despite postponements, they arrived at the scheduled Cogta meeting unprepared.

“The City of Mangaung has shown explicit disrespect for the committee and parliament,” said chairperson of the select committee on Cogta, China Dodovu.

The committee also raised concerns after the South African Local Government Association (Salga) highlighted continued deterioration of the state of Manguang, including the metro’s political leadership being fraught with divisions, paralysing the city even further,” Dodovu said.

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“The committee is concerned that despite the fact that council is only four months old, the challenges persist, leading to fears that the municipality might collapse.

“The unfortunate consequences of the utter disrespect is the lack of service delivery to the people of Mangaung who expect quality service delivery,” Dodovu said.

The meeting, Dodovu said, was postponed to this week to allow province, the city, Salga and labour to compile and share the required report.