Several Eastern Cape mayors have been earning full-time mayors’ salaries ”illegally”, senior local government and housing officials said on Friday.
These municipalities included Ndlambe, Makana, Nxuba, Inxuba Yethemba, Tsolwana, Engcobo, Blue Crane, Sundays River Valley, Baviaans, Koukamma and Maletswai.
According to local government regulations, municipalities which have fewer than 30 councillors are not permitted to have full time mayors.
Responding to questions from Democratic Alliance (DA) MPL Bobby Stevenson in the legislature, local government and housing MEC Gugile Nkwinti confirmed the irregular full-time posts and salaries.
The department has not so far published a notice in the provincial Gazette to allow Nkwinti to appoint full-time mayors in these municipalities and several others in the province.
However the department has confirmed that correct procedures were now being implemented to allow these municipalities to employ full-time mayors.
Stevenson said the framework, empowering Nkwinti to allow full-time mayors in municipalities with fewer than 30 councillors, was gazetted only on October 18. But there was still a procedure which had to be followed and no Section 12 notices in terms of the act had been amended to allow this procedure.
”Those municipalities that have simply gone ahead and done so before all the lawful procedures have been followed have taken the law into their own hands,” said Stevenson.
He said many of the full-time mayors received salary packages of over R100 000 a year which could double with benefits.
In the Ndlambe municipality, which incorporated Port Alfred and Alexandria, mayor Vukile Balura, a schoolteacher, had received permission from former education MEC Stone Sizani to go on unpaid leave for four years to enable him to become a full-time mayor.
In almost half of the 44 municipalities in the province, municipal managers were receiving packages of over R400 000.
”These high salaries being paid out at local government level to mayors are clearly unaffordable to most municipalities,” said Stevenson. – Sapa