KwaDukuza councillors are fed up with an apparent lack of willingness to have their feedback acted upon.
They feel there has been a breakdown between council and management and that they are unable to properly play the oversight role they were elected to perform.
That was the bipartisan message delivered in council last week after the presentation of the annual risk and performance report.
The report is compiled by the internal audit committee and aims to reflect how submissions from council and the auditor general have been dealt with throughout the financial year.
A number of concerns have been repeatedly noted in audit committee reports, including a lack of internal audit capacity, non-submission of material from managers, fraud risk and energy losses, among others.
“I am sure Mr Meyiwa [Performance Audit Committee chairperson] could probably deliver this report from memory at this point,” said Independence Alliance councillor, Ebrahim Kolia.
His frustration was mirrored on both sides of the aisle.
“I read through this and it is critical, critical, critical, what is going on? There is no synergy between departments,” said council speaker, Dolly Govender.
“We are barking and barking as a council, with no one to bite.”
Democratic Alliance caucus whip, Privi Makhan, echoed the sentiment.
“There is nothing happening around the recommendations. Our IDP submissions are not translating back,” she said. “Who is running this council?”
Makhan highlighted the energy losses as emblematic of the non-response from management.
“The energy loss task team seems to have gone by the wayside and there is a glaring resistance to the energy indaba,” she said.
The energy indaba has long been promised by the KwaDukuza electrical department as a way to provide feedback on departmental policies to curb the losses.
It has been on and off the schedule multiple times since November last year.
Energy losses reached R314.5-million in the last financial year and have repeatedly been raised as the biggest risk to KwaDukuza’s financial future.
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