The Bojanala Platinum District Municipality Council in the North West has adopted a R516.5m budget for the 2025/26 financial year.
These include the reviewed Integrated Development Plan, BPDM Medium Term Revenue, Expenditure Framework and budget related policies.
The Municipality’s Executive Mayor Suzan Nthangeni tablet these strategic documents during the special meeting held at the municipality chambers on Wednesday.
“To be honest, the R516.5m budget is inadequate to address all the service delivery challenges facing communities within our five local Municipalities.
But I want our communities to understand that as a district municipality we have responsibilities, empowered by the law, to coordinate and support our local municipalities.
We also have the District Development Model that allows us to unlock some of the projects from both national and provincial governments to deliver services to our communities.
But honestly speaking the budget is insufficient to address all the challenges bedevilling our communities,” said Nthangeni, who was speaking on YOU FM Newshour.
The municipality has vowed to use the budget responsibly and decisively deal with financial mismanagement.
“Let me remind you that when we got into office in 2021, we took it upon ourselves as the council that we will run a corrupt free municipality.
For example we found that workers were unpaid their monthly salaries for a number of months due to financial mismanagement, hence the commitment we made to deal decisively with the problem within the municipal purse.
We have started to deal with it, because we received forensic reports from the previous term which amongst other highlights high mismanagement of the municipal funds,” explained Nthangeni.
Furthermore, the Executive Mayor said that the municipality has effected consequence management against some of its employees who were fingered for the mismanagement of the public finances, some have resigned, others expelled while others are facing disciplinary hearings.
“We have started to enforce all existing and related laws such as the Municipal Finance Management Act, that regulates how the municipality funds must be used and other policies in government generally that deals with mismanagement of funds.
What we need to do is to strengthen our controls and systems and to most importantly strengthen our assurance structures such as Audit Committees, Financial Disciplinary Board, Risk committee, Municipal Public Accounts Committees, MPAC and the council.
These are assurance structures that will help us avert mismanagement of funds when they function optimally,” remarked Nthangeni.
District Municipalities are responsible for the integrated, sustainable, and equitable social and economic development of its entire area, including local municipalities within its jurisdiction.
This involves ensuring integrated development planning, promoting infrastructure development, and fostering equitable resource distribution.
