City of Tshwane asks for another adjustment budget extension

Gauteng finance MEC Jacob Mamabolo says the City of Tshwane has written to his office asking for an extension in passing the adjustment budget for the 2022/2023 financial year.

Mamabolo confirmed to Sowetan the metro wrote to him on Monday but he had not yet responded.

Tshwane city manager Johann Mettler wrote to the provincial Treasury on Monday, asking for the deadline to be moved from March 24 to March 31.

The city missed the February 28 deadline to pass the adjustment budget for the 2022/2023 financial year, which determines how much more residents will pay for water, electricity, sewage, waste removal as well as electricity increases

“The guys in Tshwane wrote to us asking for an extension and we replied to them. They’ve come to us after realising things are not in order in the municipality and they came to us and wrote asking for a further extension.

“We’ve not yet responded to them but we’ll do so once we’ve looked at everything,” Mamabolo said.

The MEC said he had met with the auditor-general (AG) who briefed him on the deteriorating state of audit outcomes in Gauteng.

“Following that I then convened a meeting with local municipalities namely, Emfuleni, Lesedi and Midvaal on Wednesday and on Thursday met Merafong, Rand West and Mogale City

“I’ve not met with the metros yet but I’m meeting them in the next two weeks. Metros directly account to National Treasury but I’ll still do dotted engagements with metros,” Mamabolo said.

He said the situation in Tshwane was deeply concerning and aside from noncompliance in passing the adjustment budget on time, there was also the deteriorating financial management  as magnified by the audit outcome.

“This was triggered by the worrying report by the AG. I am worried by the deteriorating state of governance in municipalities, and that came across clearly.

“Next week, I’m holding a provincial clean governance and audit indaba for the province to take the AG’s message forward on the audit outcomes where we’ll be engaging provincial accounting officers, municipal CFOs, MMCs of finance and Scopa in the province, as well as MPACs,” Mamabolo said.