The source told the Reporter that the Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng says the Emfuleni Local Municipality has returned more than R56 million in-unspent grant funding to the National Treasury. The party wrote in a statement that this is very concerning as the municipality often blames a lack of funds for poor service delivery, yet it failed to spend its allocated funds during the budgetary period.

 The source furthermore said that according to DA, this money was from the Municipal Infrastructure Grant, which is intended to improve municipal infrastructure for service delivery.

The DA says a further R4.8 million allocated to education was returned unspent, despite the extreme need for resources at our schools.

In his response to the DA’s question in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature (GPL), the MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Lebogang Maile, explained the underspending in Emfuleni was because of the late appointment of service providers due to supply chain processes and poor performance by some of the appointed service providers.

However, the DA says the supply chain processes in the Emfuleni Municipality are directly controlled by the MEC’s own office, as the municipality is under the administration of the province.  The Democratic Alliance (DA) says the dissolution of the Council in terms of section 139 of the Constitution has become unavoidable to give the people of Emfuleni a chance to elect leaders who can fix this broken municipality.

Submitted by: Cornelius D. Mofokeng.