With Nelson Mandela Bay having forfeited more than R1bn in unspent grants over the years, MPs were left stunned as co-operative governance MEC Zolile Williams faced tough questions over the worsening governance and appeals for support. Williams had to account for the state of affairs in the metro earlier this week. The damning indictment confounded MPs as the metro is ever turning to higher spheres of government for support as governance falters.
Williams revealed this while the national department unveiled a 10-member Section 154 support team tasked with dragging Nelson Mandela Bay back from the brink. “Your city — speaker, and mayor and councillors — is haemorrhaging resources that are being deployed by government to Nelson Mandela Bay,” Williams said. “My colleagues in parliament were saying: ‘MEC, Nelson Mandela Bay, in our calculation, has lost about a billion back to the national fiscus’.
“This is a pain to us as the provincial government.” The team — comprising specialists in financial management, infrastructure, supply chain, municipal public accounts committee and contract oversight — was introduced by co-operative governance deputy minister Dr Namane Dickson Masemola. Masemola said the National Treasury had analysed the metro’s finances, unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wastefulexpenditure exposure, internal controls, audit action plan and the performance of the municipal public accounts committee, concluding that Nelson Mandela Bay needed urgent, specialised support. However, if the support failed, Section 139 would kick in, which allowed for provincial intervention in struggling municipalities, which could ultimately result in the dissolution of the municipal council as a final measure
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