CAPE TOWN — The
ongoing saga of massive salaries and bonuses for municipal managers
across the country deepened further yesterday with the news that almost
70% of the most financially troubled municipalities paid performance
bonuses to their managers.
Wyndham Hartley
The remuneration of municipal managers
has long been controversial, with some earning more than President
Thabo Mbeki. Meanwhile, local councils are collectively owed more than
R40bn because they are unable to collect service debt arrears because
of a lack of financial capacity.
The issue promises to feature considerably in opposition campaigns for the March 1 local government elections.
Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi
has placed almost half of the country’s 284 municipalities under
Project Consolidate, to supply them with skilled staff to improve
financial management and the supply of basic services.
Wilhelm le Roux, the Democratic Alliance’s local
government spokesman in the National Council of Provinces, said
yesterday that a reply to a parliamentary question from Mufamadi showed
that “67% or 93 out of the 138 municipal managers who run
municipalities under government’s Project Consolidate rescue programme
for dysfunctional municipalities were awarded performance bonuses in
the past financial year”.
He said that according to the department of provincial
and local government’s own guidelines, municipalities on the Project
Consolidate programme were those that had severe service delivery
backlogs, could not collect sufficient revenue, performed less than 30%
of their assigned functions, and were in known financial distress.
“The reply to this parliamentary question confirms that
merit is not a concern when dishing out performance bonuses,” said Le
Roux .
He cited the case of the municipal manager for Emfuleni
in Gauteng. The manager received a R150000 performance bonus despite
the municipality’s failure to collect R1,3bn in rates and taxes owed.
In Bophirima municipality in North West, where 73% of
residents have no access to basic sanitation, the municipal manager was
awarded a performance bonus of R377665, said Le Roux.
“It is not hard to see why African National Congress
municipalities are in the mess that they are in. Municipal managers who
are rewarded for failing to perform have no incentive to ensure that
delivery happens.”
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