Problems of unfilled vacancies surfaced at the Budget, Treasury and IDP Portfolio committee meeting held last week after portfolio councillors raised a few issues concerning the financial report.
Problems of unfilled vacancies surfaced at the Budget, Treasury and IDP Portfolio committee meeting held last week after portfolio councillors raised a few issues concerning the financial report.
Councillor Thandeka Veliti questioned why the financial report for June had not been submitted by the end of July. She said she was not sure if the June report lacked the item submission date and advised that up-to-date financial reports be submitted for the next meeting.
“We need to be consistent and need to follow whether we are sinking or going up,” she said.Councillor Julia Wells agreed and also enquired about the operating income as at May 2010 for accrued income raised on different income categories such as general rates, sewerage charges and electricity. The budgeted accrued income for rates was projected as R26-million and the actual accrued amount as R18-million.
Wells enquired about the big gap between these figures and asked whether this indicated a problem with rate payments. Chief Financial Officer, Jackson Ngcelwane said they were not able to charge property rates in the 2009/2010 financial year for the first four months due to a technical non-compliance problem with the Municipal Property Rates Act (MPRA).
"We had to do a property evaluation process that we undertook during the first four months of the financial year," said Ngcelwane. Pseudo-budget"If you are not compliant with the MPRA you cannot charge rates to the account holders because people can turn against you and take legal action against the municipality. So instead of going ahead and charge rates that could be challenged, the option was to rather appoint a service provider to do a evaluation process in terms of the MPRA." The consumers then had to be levied from the beginning of financial year and an adjustment done to spread the remaining levy over eight months of the financial year. "This means that the actuals showing on the system will not be close to the budget, but come end of June we should be close to what we budged for," Ngcelwane said. Genuine excuses?
Responding to the issue raised by Veliti about the late June report, Ngcelwane said they have been running some departments with skeleton staff which has led to the late processing of payments and reports. Another challenge he mentioned was that of departments not submitting information required for financial reports, such as the unrecorded figures for the water statistics that indicate water lost in distribution. Councillor Zonwabele Mantla added that Ngcelwane was wise to raise this issue as gaps in reports are not acceptable because councillors have to go back and report back to the community. He also said that the reasons for this situation are also unclear to them.
Veliti said that the Municipal Manager had a responsibility to run this institution and that job has to be carried out. She advised Ngcelwane not to have any fears in expressing the reason why this is dragging.
As she said this, she speculated political interactions as she was not sure of the reasons. Should this problem happen again, Veliti further advised Ngcelwane to draw up a detailed report on the matter. She further recommended that this issue be taken to the Municipal Manager’s office immediately.
