The Democratic Alliance (DA) can reveal that during the 24/25 financial year, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality underspent on its repairs and maintenance budget by a staggering R152,530,210.
With 10,000 streetlights out across the city, residents are fearing for their lives as criminals take advantage of dark streets. Children are forced to play in sewage-filled parks and thousands of litres of water are lost to leaks every single day. Power and water outages are a frequent occurrence, causing businesses to shed jobs.
Accordingly, I have written to the MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Zolile Williams, requesting an urgent meeting to discuss this budget and underspending crisis in Nelson Mandela Bay. I have given MEC Williams seven days to respond to my request.
It is plain for everyone to see that there is a service delivery mess in this city, impacting each and every single resident in various ways, and yet this negligent government can’t even spend its own budget on repairing and maintaining critical infrastructure. This is made worse by the fact that the municipality is losing critical skills with a number of senior engineering vacancies and resignations. The latest loss, Senior Engineer Tholi Biyela, is another nail in the service delivery coffin.
The very same MEC Williams, who refuses to investigate maladministration in NMB has provided these shocking figures through the Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature. The MEC’s inaction in the face of these ongoing crises is unacceptable.
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An amount of R150 million could easily fix every single one of the 10,000 faulty streetlights across our city or it could be put towards upgrading a substation or wastewater treatment plant to prevent power outages and sewage spills. Instead, the money will not be spent on service delivery as it will probably need to be sent back to National Treasury.
While I was Mayor for nine months in 2022, we delivered the first unqualified audit in nine years, directly as a result of spending budgets on delivering services. For example, our administration was repairing over 100 streetlights a day. If this is what we were able to do in nine months, imagine what we could do in a full five-year term.
This ANC-led coalition of corruption needs to be booted out of City Hall. Come the next local government election, we absolutely must vote for a future we can all be proud of.
Together we can get Nelson Mandela Bay working again.