The deployment of administrators to rescue embattled municipalities is proving to be a fruitless and expensive exercise as these municipalities are not improving, while millions in salaries and benefits continue to be paid every month to those who occupy these plum positions.

The South African Local Government Association (Salga) and opposition parties in KwaZulu-Natal decried the situation and equated it to “finding employment for cadres”.

Salga held a media briefing on Thursday to provide an update on the state of municipalities and the work being done to improve them. It said the cost of placing ailing municipalities under administration amounted to close to R1 billion.

However, calculations by the DA based on information released by the provincial department of Cogta showed that the salary and security benefits alone were costing Cogta around a conservative R16 million a year.

The DA has sent parliamentary questions to MEC Bongi Sithole Moloi on the matter.

The response showed that there were eight municipalities under administration in KZN at a total cost of R2 million a month. The figure is for salaries and security only.

These costs do not include those associated with other employees who are brought in to assist administrators, with the travels and the accommodation costs of these administrators and other expenses.

Reacting to Salga’s assertion, governance and public finance experts said the problem was much deeper than administrators and required radical solutions.

They called for the funding model of municipalities to be reviewed, saying most municipalities barely had resources to function.

Addressing the media, IFP councillor and Salga chairperson Thami Ntuli said the presence of administrators was increasingly becoming an exercise in futility.

“We have learnt that close to a billion rand has been spent on these administrators. If you look at the situation at municipalities, they are not improving.

The situation in fact is getting worse. “There used to be eight municipalities that were under administration.

Some of these municipalities have been under administration for at least seven years,” he said.

The Msunduzi Municipality has been under administration for close to five years and has changed administrators several times with little or no improvement.

Ntuli said even the quality of the administrators was questionable. “We have one case where an administrator earns more than R100000 a month, yet he is less qualified than the municipal manager of that very same municipality.

“We have a situation where the administrators are appointed only on the terms of reference and do not have deliverable targets. The fact that there is no deliverable target is the reason why the municipalities are not improving,” he said.

Sources, speaking to “The Mercury” on condition of confidentiality, said it was always the very same people that were being appointed as administrators.

DA spokesperson on Cogta Martin Meyer described the employment of administrators as cadre deployment at its worst. “Some of the people that have been deployed have law degrees but one has a diploma in security studies.”

Meyer said the cost of funding administrators exceeded R2 million each month, as revealed in the MEC’s responses.

“The cost did not include benefits that could include a housing allowance as these administrators are asked to move to other places, flights, and other benefits.

“The money that taxpayers are paying is already too much without any benefits.

These people deployed are loyal to the party, not to the ratepayers,” he said.

Meyer said there were “deputy administrators” that had been appointed to areas like Msunduzi and those costs had not been included in the MEC’s response. He said they would be sending follow-up questions.

IFP spokesperson on Cogta Otto Kunene said the IFP had repeatedly said that some of the people deployed had no track record in fixing municipalities and had failed as municipal managers.

“We have said that these people should have terms of reference that are not open-ended, that they must have targets they must deliver on. We have seen instances where a municipality has an administrator from the beginning to the end of the council term.

“The IFP said cadre deployment must be done away with and people who are experts in their field be appointed. If you did that, you will have no problems,” Kunene said.

Professor Pundy Pillay, a governance and public finance expert from Wits University, said local government was in a mess across the country and the problem ran deeper than just failing administrators.

He said part of the radical thinking required was to look at the funding model, saying that many municipalities simply did not have the resources to carry out their mandate. They could not attract the best skills.

Pillay said the bulk of the budget was used up by the provincial government.

“They cannot attract the best skills. You will find that a municipality has a vacancy for a labourer. How can that be when there is so much unemployment?

The reason is that there is no money as it is being used up by provincial governments.”

Cogta was contacted for comment but has not responded by deadline on Thursday.

The Mercury

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Who is going to fix the failing fixers?