During its recent special council meeting, the Dipaleseng Local Municipality (Balfour, Grootvlei and Greylingstad) recorded R58,2 million as fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
This amount constitutes approximately 15% of the total budget and stems mainly from interest and penalties on unpaid bills from Eskom, the Auditor-General, the Department of Water and Sanitation and SARS.
Fruitless and wasteful expenditure shot up from R9,6 million in the 2023/24 financial year to R58,2 million in 2024/25.
This sharp increase points to the fact that the Municipality’s underlying debt problem has become progressively worse over the last three years, and that it is unable to pay its creditors and suppliers on time.
In the same period, the collection rate has not improved at all. Consequently, paying residents are increasingly shouldering the burden for those who are not paying.
A staggering R110 million has been written off over the last three years. Residents should, therefore, no longer accept the excuse that there is “no money for services”. The collapse of service delivery is directly caused by poor governance and the mismanagement of funds.
For a long time, the Freedom Front Plus (VF Plus) has proposed in council and committee meetings that revenue should be ring-fenced for specific purposes. If this R58,2 million had instead been spent on infrastructure, tangible differences would have been evident in the relevant towns.
The Freedom Front Plus proposed an action plan to prevent further financial waste, but the ANC-controlled Council rejected the proposal. The official financial recovery, revenue collection and cost savings plans are producing no results.
The Freedom Front Plus was the only party that voted against adopting the wasteful expenditure.
The party will keep promoting its proposals in the various committees with one main objective in mind: putting an end to the squandering and ensuring that tax money is spent on basic service delivery, as it ought to be.
Vote for the Freedom Front Plus on 4 November to stop the squandering of tax money.
The Freedom Front Plus stands for accountable local government.
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