There is a fire in government departments at the national and state level that owes large sums of money to municipalities as they will be withheld money from September this year. This amount will be withheld by the National Treasury Department as it has been notified of this move.
This was expressed by the Minister of Finance, Mr. Enoch Godongwana, when he announced that they will release part of the money that was held by municipalities that failed to follow the rules of money management.
Godongwana said they have written to the relevant departments informing them that they will “cry” if they fail to pay the municipalities.
“There is another province that owes the municipalities R700 million, and we planned to pay this amount for seven years. This is unacceptable that you can pay the debt for so many years. I have to pay the provincial and national departments the money after September, and the debtor will not pay this money,” he said while talking to the media.
He also warned that they will take legal action against municipalities that fail to pay pensions.
“We were not taking legal action by filing lawsuits and now it is one of the things we will do. One of the municipalities was taken to court for retiring after his pension was not paid. It is a crime not to pay money to the pension fund,” he said.
Godongwana said that since they are going to release R7.1 billion of money for the municipalities on Friday, it does not mean that they have followed all the rules of money management.
“We are letting it go because we don’t want to disrupt the delivery of services to the public. There are 69 municipalities that were affected by this and 20 have received the money, 21 have still received half and 28 have not received their money at all.”
He said they have written to the provincial governments that have municipalities that do not follow the guidelines as well as the Minister of Governance and Indigenous Affairs in those provinces because they want a report almost every quarter on the steps taken to correct the situation in these councils.
The MEC for Cooperative Governance and Indigenous Affairs, Mr. Velenkosini Hlabisa, complained that most of the municipalities that do not follow the guidelines are spending money they do not have.
“The problem is that municipalities make plans with the money they don’t have. It is deceiving the public to promise something when you know there is no money to do that,” he said.
He also complained about municipalities that fail to pay salaries due to the problem of making plans when there is no money for that. He stated that they will closely monitor the financial performance of these councils.