NW405 held the second ordinary council meeting at the Dan Tloome chambers on 28 February to discuss a range of issues.
The most significant development at the meeting was when the council turned down the recommendation from the Department of Infrastructure to redirect funds allocated for Ikageng, Promosa and Mohadin upgrades to the upgrading of an electricity substation in the Bult area.
‘The council concurred that R10 million – part of the R22 million – will still be used for the installation of the second 132/11 kV transformer at Ikageng West as provided for in the 2016/17 budget. The remainder of the amount – R12 million – will be for the transfer of the Promosa and Mohadin load to Ikageng West,’ said Willie Maphosa, the council spokesperson.
Maphosa says, however, that the municipality will still have to apply for R150 million from the Department of Energy as the project was initially conceived with this grant funding in mind. ‘It will be difficult to proceed with the two projects in the absence of this additional funding,’ he said.
Cllr Leon Mkhabela agreed that the money should be spent in the previously disadvantaged communities. The IDP manager, Dolos Luka said moving the funds would mean amending the IDP. ‘We need to inform the public why we are moving the funds. This is not correct,’ he said.
The rest of the meeting was interrupted by outbursts from various councillors. The DA PR councillor, Romeo Matjila, told the council speaker, Elias Mogoeemang that while businesses are being empowered, they are not local businesses. ‘We are tired of empowering businesses from outside of our city. Speaker, you don’t care; you don’t want to empower our people,’ he said emotionally.
The EFF PR councillor, Anna Xaba also raised the issue of land eviction in Ventersdorp.
Both members were told that their items were not on the agenda and that they were not obeying the rules of order. While the ANC councillor, Eric Louw, raised an important point that, in future, the council must make provision for political parties to raise issues that are not on the agenda, he said it must be done in the proper way.
The meeting was supposedly held under bizarre circumstances, with the security guards roaming the municipality passages. According to the acting executive mayor, Kelvin Johnson, they had received a security threat in the morning. The council had not responded to questions from the Herald about the threat.
The rest of the issues were discussed in a closed session.
