Mandla Msibi
The City of Mbombela has failed to reduce its staggering R160 million annual overtime bill for the past seven years, despite the introduction of “cost curtailment measures” by the Mpumalanga municipality.
Mbombela’s overtime bill for municipal staff peaked at R14 million a month in 2016, with the consistent failure to bring it down sparking concern among opposition parties, who want the municipality to fill vacancies and enforce consequence management on errant council departments.
In February, opposition parties tried to secure an intervention from Mpumalanga cooperative governance and traditional affairs MEC Mandla Msibi, who faced several questions in the provincial legislature over the debacle.
At the time, Msibi said that steps were being taken by the municipality to reduce overtime costs and that consequence management was being implemented against those responsible for driving up the costs.
But the bill has still not been reduced and is, according to Mbombela Freedom Front Plus (FF+) councillor Ken Robertson, increasing, a situation he described this week as “unacceptable”.
“The overtime bill is still standing at R14 million a month. We have a massive number of vacancies across departments, which contributes heavily to the annual bill. One would think that these would be filled, but they haven’t,” Robertson said.
“A lot has to do with people not doing work during regular hours because they want to work overtime and make extra money. There is poor management and poor monitoring, and the bill hasn’t been reduced at all,” Robertson said.
“The municipality is talking about revenue enhancement but the overtime bill actually escalates every month, not by much, but it still escalates. This is not ideal for a cash strapped municipality.”
He said department heads were not implementing council policy on overtime and were allowing staff to work hours that were in excess of those legally permissible in terms of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.
This, he said, contributed to the governance and financial crisis faced by the municipality, which had received financially unqualified audit opinions from the auditor general since 2018.
Mbombela incurred unauthorised, irregular and wasteful expenditure totalling R2 228 billion in the 2021-22 financial year, up on the R1.354 billion in similar expenditure during the previous year.
The auditor general continued to express going-concern uncertainty — doubt about Mbombela’s ability to continue operating — about the municipality in this year’s report on councils, issued on Wednesday.
According to the auditor general, the city had an 18% overall vacancy rate, with 8% of senior positions in the council unoccupied, while its deficit of R393.3 million exceeded its revenue.
In addition to its financial woes, Mbombela also has a huge backlog of council resolutions that it has failed to implement since 2016.
In February, Robertson wrote to Msibi asking him to intervene and have the council implement a total of 496 unimplemented council decisions — many of which had a direct harmful effect on service delivery — which had built up over time.
Robertson said that about 200 decisions had been passed by the ANC in the council without any preparatory process two weeks later, despite concerns from the opposition that by doing so they were simply ticking boxes, rather than ensuring that decisions were implemented.
“The decisions were pushed through with no process, no discussion and no reports whatsoever. We have approached the MEC of Cogta [cooperative governance and traditional affairs department, but have heard nothing,” Robertson said.
The governing party has enjoyed an outright majority in Mbombela since 2009 when the municipality was proclaimed. It currently holds 59 of 90 council seats.
Robertson has also written to the city’s rules and ethics committee about 17 written questions that have not been answered by the mayor or city management since January 2022.
The FF+ wants the council to amend its standing rules to compel the city leadership to answer all oral and written questions within 21 days, rather than four times a year, as is the current arrangement.
“Responding promptly to questions ought to be part of the municipality’s attempts to be accountable and transparent in dealing with taxpayers money and making decisions,” Robertson said.
Municipality spokesperson Joseph Ngala said the overtime matter was “being handled as part of the city’s cost curtailment measures”.
He said the overtime issue was also “being investigated” and that a report would be tabled before council in due course.