The appointment of Mpho Nawa as Chief Administrator of the Tshwane Metro led to the unlawful approval of a budget that leaves thousands of Pretoria residents perplexed.
AfriForum has already served court papers to have the budget decision set aside, as well as to demand that a new process be started to approve a new budget.
Morné Mostert, Manager of Local Government Affairs at AfriForum, says that the Administrator’s decision violates the Constitution. According to Mostert, it seems that political interference from the office of David Makhura, Premier of Gauteng, may be responsible for the current chaos in the Metro.
“Makhura should have stepped in immediately to correct the situation; however, his political ties prevented him from doing so,” Mostert says.
According to Mostert, the Administrator’s decision did not only place a financial burden on residents of the Metro. “Various policies were apparently also pushed through, which led to chaos in service delivery. The Metro changed the tariff structure for water services, which now disadvantages the poor and discourages consumers from saving water.”
Since being placed under administration, the Metro has witnessed several problems. Thousands of residents receive erroneous municipal accounts. Garbage has not been collected for the past two weeks. Landfill sites are apparently closed, and residents have no other choice but to leave their refuse outside these sites.
“Makhura fails in his duties as Premier of Gauteng. As a result, residents suffer terribly under a management that has all but collapsed,” Mostert says.
Deidré du Preez, a coordinator at AfriForum’s Community Affairs division, says that residents must protect themselves against astronomically erroneous accounts by declaring disputes with the Metro. When residents declare disputes, the Metro may neither proceed with cutting off their electricity supply, nor using any other means of collecting fees until the disputes have been resolved.
Residents can download a dispute form at www.antiek.afriforum.co.za/tshwane-metro/, complete and email it to disputes@tshwane.gov.za or customercare@tshwane.gov.za.
Dr Eugene Brink, Strategic Advisor for Community Affairs at AfriForum, says that it is preposterous that Makhura is focusing all his attention on the Tshwane metro while the Merafong and Emfuleni Municipalities are in a much worse condition and serious corruption is rampant there.
