Various political parties and civic organisations have reacted differently to the budget speech that was delivered by MMC Eugene Modise, who also serves as the Municipality’s Deputy Mayor.
The Bolsheviks Party of South Africa (BPSA) slammed the behaviour of Councillors in the Municipality chambers during the delivery of the speech by Modise.
“The Speaker of Council had to call Councillors to order time after time for misbehaving in the chambers and it is clear that these Councillors do not understand the importance of being a public representative and proper behaviour on a public platform,” said the party’s District Convener Kgopa Matlala.
“Our message to the MMC and the entire City of Tshwane Municipallity is that we want a clean audit by the Auditor General and not the unqualified audit that the MMC is so proud of,” he said.
Be that as it may, Matlala welcomed the City’s endeavour to reactivate the Wonderboom Airport as well as the Pretoria Showgrounds which he said had been mismanaged by previous ANC administrations.
He also applauded the Municipality’s decision to finally insource services such as cleaning and security.
He expressed regret that Modise announced that water tankers will continue to be used in providing water to some residents of Tshwane.
“Unfortunately the Deputy Mayor did what we feared he would do, which is to table a budget that pushes the responsibility of the City’s financial rescue onto the residents of Tshwane; treating them like cash cows, but the DA has been a proponent of increasing the value of a property that one does not pay rent and taxes on from R150 000 to R450 000 yet Deputy Mayor’s budget increases it only to R250 000,” said DA Councillor Jacqui Uys.
“This means there will be large portion of our communities which will not qualify for free indigent services, and this puts them in a bracket whereby they have to pay in full for their refuse removal,” she said.
“If they now choose not to use the City’s waste removal faculties they are slapped with a punitive charge of R200 and I am therefore not sure as to how this Deputy Mayor claims that this is a pro-poor budget because it is using the residents of Tshwane as cash cows so that the ANC can look good on paper,” she said.
Regarding the Wonderboom issue, Uys revealed that during its tenure in office, the DA had a plan in place to revive the Wonderboom Airport but our stance was that the Municipality is not an airport operator and that we should therefore join hands with those operate airports in order to make the airport a profitable entity,” enthused Uys.
“We are going round in circles in our fight against corruption and maladministration because officials who have been pointed out as being corrupt by Deputy President Paul Mashatile and Auditor General Tsakani Maluleke are the ones who will be presiding over the process of spending the City of Tshwane Municipality’s budget,” said LASCA President Tshepo Mahlangu.
He said the budget delivered by Modise did not address the following:
1.Scrapping of prescribed debts.
2. Introduction of Meter readers who will do the actual reading instead of using “guestimators” in the form of consulting firms who charge the City exorbitant fees for their shabby service.
“One day this broken system will be fixed by the aggrieved residents of Tshwane,” warned Mahlangu.