Speaking in the budget debate during the week of June 2, the DA’s Clr Chris Swanepoel said this was one of the reasons why the DA could not support the ANC’s budget.
Swanepoel raised serious concerns that the ANC-led metro had forced through the approval of policy amendments by allowing officials free reign on changes.
“These amendments, which impact on the spending of public money, happened without proper consultation or oversight over the process.”
Swanepoel said the DA did not believe the policy amendments should not be passed without further scrutiny.
“The proposed policy changes are intended to be a road map of how public money would be spent in the metro’s Integrated Development Plan (IDP).
“However, too few councillors know what the changes are or what they mean and the DA has requested that the metro retrospectively present the changes at a workshop to ensure that every public representative of the metro knows what the potential consequences of the changes will be.”
According to Swanepoel, it is a disgrace that officials were able to make changes without input from councillors who may well have wanted pieces of policy added or scrapped completely.
The DA has demanded that whoever compiled the report take responsibility for the fact that only seven of the ten oversight committees’ input and comments were recorded.
Swanepoel further elaborates the Corporate and Shared Services Committee, for example, is not mentioned which means that not one of the committee’s recommendations on any of the eleven departments it oversees, can be adopted.
“In addition, the seven committees which are represented have been heavily edited – again by officials – and only a condensed version of their recommendations appears in the report.
“The question of who was permitted to carry out these edits has to be asked because no one has the power to edit information coming out of oversight committees and the council cannot pass resolutions based on the scant information provided.”
Swanepoel said no one had the authority to change oversight committees’ recommendations.
“By implication this undermines the full council as the committees are made up of councillors, elected by the broader community of Ekurhuleni, unlike officials who are appointed by the majority party.” – @IschkeBoksburg
