MILLIONS of rands allocated to repair the damage caused by the floods in KwaZulu-Natal, have returned due to the failure of municipalities to use them. The Ministry of Finance has revealed that five municipalities have failed to properly use the money allocated to repair the damage caused by the floods.
The officer in charge of monitoring the use of money in municipalities, Mr. Sello Mashaba, said that some municipalities decided to save their other needs with the money to repair the damage caused by the floods.
He said this when the Department appeared before the KwaZulu-Natal Legislative Committee.
He was responding to a question from MKP member, Mr. Sibongiseni Majola, who asked whether the Department has any plans to monitor whether the money allocated to the municipalities is used for the right projects or if they end up working on other needs with the money?
In recent years, floods have hit the province one after the other. A devastating flood struck in 2022, and others followed.
Mashaba pointed out that the problem-ridden municipality, Mpendle, is the one who gave them a head start. He said the municipality was allocated R45 million for the 2023/2024 financial year, and R15 million for the 2024/2025 financial year.
“They failed to use R45 million of that money. When they asked to be allowed not to have the money confiscated, we found out that this money is not in the council’s bank account. It is possible that the money was stolen or the municipality used it for things that have nothing to do with repairing the damage caused by the floods. Therefore, the department decided to reject the council’s request not to have the money confiscated, and issued an order to return all the money.”
Mpendle Municipality is facing a financial crisis which has led to it being unable to pay workers. He failed to pay the workers on time in December and January, until now the workers have not received their salaries for the previous month.
Mashaba said that there is currently R38 million Mpendle council officials, who fail to explain where it has gone.
“This was not only money to repair the damage caused by the floods, but there were other conditional grants. We decided that the municipality should return part of this money because we don’t want the municipality to be left with nothing.”
He said other municipalities that have returned money are Mpofana, Jozini, and Nkosi Mtubatuba. He pointed out that the Durban Municipality also failed to spend R1.5 billion to repair the damage caused by floods in the 2022/2023 financial year.
Mashaba said Theku was not deprived of this money because it made a request not to be deprived.