President Cyril Ramaphosa has condemned the North West government over its failure to utilise Municipal Infrastructure Grants (MIGs) while being unable to render essential services to communities.
Ramaphosa was speaking in Mahikeng during the ANC’s NWC meeting, where he slammed municipalities in the province for forfeiting R460 million to the treasury in the 2021/22 financial year.
The President described the failure to spend funds by the government spheres as a crime against citizens.
“This thing of having unspent budgets that the national government gives the municipalities money, and that money goes unspent. I regard it as a crime against our people. This grant is meant for a variety of things to be done and must be spent. Money must never be taken back to the treasury, this must come to an end. And I want it to end right this year.
“Our biggest challenges are the municipalities. We are going to work to fix our municipalities. The first thing is that they must spend the money that is sent to them, and the corruption at that level must come to an end.
“Even the money that is budgeted for them must be properly utilized. In the presidency, we are going to be having a microscopic focus on how our municipalities are going to be spending their budgets. So that there will be no money that goes unspent.
“Some of the problems of the municipalities’ failure for not utilising the funds is that they don’t have capacity. They also don’t have the people who can do the jobs because a number of positions go unoccupied.
‘They don’t appoint people, and we have said from both national and provincial levels the vacant positions must be filled. People must be hired. Even coming to projects local business people must be prioritized instead of getting people from other provinces unless a specific specialty is needed and cannot be found locally,” Ramaphosa said.
The President raised concerns about water provision, human settlement, and electricity challenges in the province while the Municipal Infrastructure Funds return unspent.
