The mayors of nine municipalities in the North West who failed to spend the R460 million of the Municipal Infrastructure Grants (MIGs) for the 2021/22 financial year, have been given two weeks to act against officials who didn’t do their jobs.
The MEC for Cooperative Governance, Nono Maloyi, warned at a media briefing in Mahikeng, that political heads will face dire consequences for protecting municipal officials.
The province’s 13 municipalities were afforded an opportunity to provide reasons as to why they should be allocated grants after failing to spend them in the previous financial year and nine of them failed to do so.
The municipalities in question include Ditsobotla, Ratlou, Mamusa, Rustenburg, JB Marks, City of Matlosana, Moses Kotane, Madibeng local municipalities, and the Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati district municipality.
Maloyi said it was disappointing that the municipalities have lost the grants, while residents are without services.
“On the 17th of February this year, the Minister of Finance wrote to different municipalities indicating that if they don’t spend these conditional grants, they might stop that money. Immediately after that, we had a session with the municipalities.
“We gave them seven days to respond. And all of them assured us that they were working on responses and that those monies will be committed. We even said where there is no capacity because we understand that in other municipalities your senior positions are vacant, they are at liberty to interact with the department in order for the department to assist you.
“On the 25th of March this year, the Minister for Finance wrote to me indicating that he has taken a decision to stop the funds of nine municipalities. We officially wrote to all nine of them as the province.
“Firstly reminding them of the session that we had with all of them, and secondly requesting them to indicate why they did not respond positively to what the minister had requested them to do on the 17th of February.
“We also said any official in any municipality who was involved in this, must indicate what action they have taken against that individual. We said they must submit that report before the end of business on Friday.
“A few of them have responded, but not all of them. We had a session with some of them this past Sunday, we also indicated to them that we will not leave this thing as it is,” Maloyi said.
He cautioned political heads against forcing his hand to act against them for failing to implement consequence action against those responsible for the loss of the much-needed MIGs.
“In the North West, we will no longer tolerate a situation where money is allocated and we fail to use the money when there are so many challenges in the province. We have said that if they don’t act against those officials, who did not do what is expected of them, we will have no option but to act at a political level,” Maloyi said.
Workers Federation Cosatu’s secretary in the North West Kopano Konopi, said the government’s intervention plans will be in vain if officials deployed at the municipalities lack capability.
“As Cosatu we view this as a lack of capacity from those who have been deployed to ensure that services are delivered to the people of the province. We also view this dereliction of duty by those who have been employed to provide service to the people of the North West province.
“Cosatu calls for consequence management on those who are responsible for this loss of grants because we view this not as a loss of money but a violation of basic human rights. Cosatu calls on the ANC as it is the party that governs the majority of the municipalities in the province to rein in their deployees and make them account for this action,” said Kopano.
