Pretoria - Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana fingered Madibeng Local Municipality in Brits, in the North West, as one of the nine worst municipalities, for failing to spend their conditional grants from the national government.
Godongwana’s withdrawal of more than R145 million from the municipality in an indictment against Madibeng and eight others, is revealed in his letter to MEC for Co-operative Governance, Traditional Affairs and Human Settlements Nana Maloyi.
Maloyi is also the ANC provincial chairperson.
Godongwana listed Madibeng and eight other municipalities as failing to comply with his request to spend their conditional grants, in letters sent in February.
“The letters issued to these municipalities and the responses from the respective municipalities led to the National Treasury to decide to either proceed with the stopping or the non stopping of the allocations in compliance with the Municipal Finance Management Act,” he said.
He said the municipalities were afforded an opportunity to submit written representation but the nine were found to have failed to meet the requirements.
Godongwana said the National Treasury decided that the following nine municipalities – Madibeng, Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati, the City of Matlosana, Rustenburg, Moses Kotane, JB Marks, Ratlou, Ditsobotla, and Mamusa – would have their funds stopped for the 2022/23 financial year.
All of them would cumulatively lose R460m in conditional grant funding.
The DA in the North West urged Maloyi to immediately summon all nine municipalities before the provincial public accounts committee.
DA North West spokesperson for local government Freddy Sonakile said the National Treasury’s decision would have far-reaching consequences for infrastructure development, maintenance, and service delivery in the province’s worst-performing municipalities.
Sonakile said Maloyi was informed that the decision to withhold conditional grant funding was informed by the poor performance of municipalities against the requirements of each grant allocated to the province.
The conditional grants affected were the municipal infrastructure grant, energy efficiency and demand-side management grant, and water services infrastructure grant, among others.
Madibeng was the biggest loser, with a cut of R145.4m, followed by Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati (R119.4m), and Rustenburg (R65.3m).
JB Marks and Matlosana are also in the top five worst-affected municipalities, losing R59m and R2m respectively.
“This is a heavy blow to service delivery in the North West. ANC-governed municipalities not only fail to invest in infrastructure development and maintenance but when they receive funding, fail to spend the money on projects it is intended for,” Sonakile said.
“North West suffers a massive infrastructure backlog. National Treasury’s decision, although understandable, will put additional strain on the already limited cash flow of municipalities, who mostly adopted unfunded budgets. The little revenue collected by municipalities will be utilised for operational and wage bill expenses.”
He warned that the withholding of conditional grant funding will “further collapse basic service delivery to residents”.
Maloyi’s spokesperson Tumelo Maruping said his political boss had convened a meeting yesterday with all affected municipalities to get a report from them.
“All these municipalities responded to the February letter from the minister and now the MEC convened a meeting to get a report on what led to the verdict which was issued by National Treasury on them,” Maruping said.
He said Maloyi would issue a formal response after his meeting with the affected municipalities.
Pretoria News