Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa has vowed to tackle the persisting challenge of ghost employees plaguing the troubled Lichtenburg-based Ditsobotla Local Municipality in the North West.
Hlabisa undertook an oversight visit to the municipality hardly a month after he placed it under administration for the ninth time and immediately introduced a national government intervention to resolve long standing governance failures, financial mismanagement, and a breakdown in basic service delivery to the community.
Speaking on YOUFM Newshour, Hlabisa has, however, applauded the progress made by the National Cabinet Representative (NCR) Kopung Ralikontsane and his team in a short space of time deployed to the municipality.
“It was September 10, last month when I was at the municipality, and I gave them what I called an ultimatum that within 10-days the parallel structures of mayors, speakers and municipal managers should cease to exist, and one structure should be elected.
Indeed, there’s been great progress because on September 23, one mayor (ANC’s Morutse Molefe) and one speaker (EFF’s Manana Bogatsu) were elected.
There’s one centre that is holding. I also met the councillors who pledged their solidarity to the elected executive of the Municipality to tackle long outstanding critical service delivery issues to the community,” said Hlabisa.
Hlabisa has also commended an improved working relations between the councillors who accompanied him to a community engagement meeting at a fully packed local community hall.
“The community was justifiably angry at their councillors, but I introduced the mayor and the new speaker, and I committed that I will return to Ditsobotla in four months’ time to assess progress. But what is just good is that there’s a centre now, there’s one leadership that will drive the municipality in the right direction,” explained the minister.
He assured that the NCR will start working on resolving other outstanding challenges such as bloated staff personnel at the municipality.
“The status quo report reflected that the staff is bloated with strong suggestions that there might be ghost employees. Now it will take NCR a little bit of time to do a physical audit of all staff members even those working at the plant will have to be audited so that it is discovered how many are ghost workers because there are strong allegations to that effect,” remarked the minister.
Hlabisa has implored government departments, businesses and residents to start paying for services received from the municipality for it to be self-reliant and properly run.
“There’s an ongoing discussion between Ditsobotla and the government departments regarding the monies owed to the municipality. Some government departments are disputing the figures which is a common thing because even at a cabinet level we are working in cleaning the data, because we have made it clear that the departments must pay municipalities, we can’t expect municipalities to function, yet you render them dysfunctional by not paying what is due to them. We therefore are going to encourage departments to quickly settle their municipal debt because the municipality is on the verge of collapsing,” emphasised Hlabisa.
The minister said there needs to be an engagement with various stakeholders, regarding the outstanding debt.
“I have also encouraged the mayor that he will need to call the stakeholders meeting including the businesspeople, because businesspeople are more willing to pay and even to contribute as long as they know that the money they contribute is not going to disappear in wrong hands,” concluded Hlabisa.
