POLOKWANE – The Polokwane Municipality has to return an amount of R142m to the fiscus that was not spent during the 2021/22 financial year after a request to roll-over the funds to the current financial year was declined by National Treasury.
The funds were allocated to the municipality as a grant to fund infrastructure projects that now have to be funded from other sources that could have been used for other projects that could have improved the municipality’s response to the water crisis.
National Treasury recently advised the municipality that its request to roll-over R152.1m was turned down and only R10.1m may be rolled over to fund the upgrade of arterial road D4014 in Makgoro (Sekweng) to Makaijane (R3.2m), upgrading of the road in Ga-Thoka from the reservoir to Makanya (R1.8m), completion of the hospital road in Mankweng (R4.2m) and upgrading of the arterial road in Ga-Rampheri (R764 000).
According to National Treasury, the R142m roll-over was not approved due to the municipality’s non-appointment of contractors or late appointment of contractors for the Nelson Mandela Bo-okelo crossing, Hospital View streets and a stormwater canal, resulting in a failure to spend 50% of the amount allocated for the Neighbourhood Development Partnership Grant of R22.6m, failure to spend R28.3m of the Regional Bulk Infrastructure Grant, being the third consecutive rollover for the same conditional grant as well as an amount of R12.5m for the water services infrastructure for which a third consecutive rollover request of the same conditional grant was also made.
An amount of R71.4m for the public transport network (BRT) was disallowed after the Department of Transport did not recommend the rollover because appointment letters were not provided for the construction of the civil works at the General Joubert BRT station and upgrade of roadways on the transit mall and the refurbishment of the daytime layover facility and the construction of civil works at the bus depot.
The late appointment of a service provider for the Leeto La Polokwane Phase 1A turnaround strategy was also cited as a reason for the refusal.
“The failure to spend infrastructure grants while Polokwane is in the grip of a water crisis, mainly due to inadequate infrastructure is indicative of the ruling party’s lack of political will to achieve change in our city,” DA councillor in the municipality, Tiny Chidi said.
Chidi added that the DA will submit written questions to council at the next sitting to probe the R142m lost in grant funding.
In a response to a request for comment, spokesperson for the municipality, Thipa Selala, said that the roll-overs were significantly affected by the moratorium imposed by National Treasury on all public procurement from February 2022 until 30 May 2022 and as a result, commitments towards projects were halted.
The moratorium was imposed by National Treasury to enable adjustment of certain shortcomings in the regulations regarding procurement processes and were applicable to all municipalities.
“Since there were no commitments, projects will not be affected as the current budget allocations are sufficient to commence with these projects. The municipality has cleared all significant backlogs on procurement including the appointment of a panel of engineers to commence with the designs and monitoring of the projects,” Selala explained but did not relate to the fact that the projects will no longer be funded from the allocation from National Treasury because the grant had to be returned to the fiscus.
This manoeuvre simply entails that funds that could have been utilised for other infrastructure projects had to be shelved.
No explanation was offered regarding the progress with projects since the beginning of the financial year on July1, 2021 until the moratorium was announced.
