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Durban – Belts are being tightened to the last hole in the Mpofana Municipality in Mooi River where a financial crisis means all unnecessary expenditure – like food at meetings, new furniture and travel – has been stopped. <\/p>\n
And there will be no Christmas party for staff this year. <\/p>\n
\u00a0The South African Municipal Workers\u2019 Union (Samwu) raised the alarm about the municipality\u2019s financial crisis apparently because it was running a R3 million overdraft. <\/p>\n
Despite this, mayor Janet Mpangase said that there was no crisis. <\/p>\n
But Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) spokesman Lennox Mabaso said the department had intervened to help the municipality recover. <\/p>\n
Mabaso said the department and the provincial treasury had developed \u201ca recovery plan which should be adopted and implemented by the municipality\u201d. <\/p>\n
As a start it had been instructed to stop catering for meetings. <\/p>\n
Councillors and officials are normally given breakfast and lunch during meetings but now they had been told to bring their own food, said Mabaso. <\/p>\n
Other measures include: <\/p>\n
* No promotional items, such as T-shirts, caps and bags would be acquired; <\/p>\n
* No unnecessary offsite meetings would be held; and <\/p>\n
* No new furniture or other equipment would be bought. <\/p>\n
* No private venues would be used for meetings, strategic planning sessions and workshops. <\/p>\n
The employees, councillors and senior officials would pay from their own pockets for team-building exercises and Christmas functions. <\/p>\n
He said hotel and bed and breakfast bookings had been cancelled. Those travelling to meetings outside Mooi River would have to return and sleep at home. <\/p>\n
There would be strict controls of overtime, while the use of the telephone as well as the municipality\u2019s cellphones should also be monitored to cut down bills. <\/p>\n
There would also be a review of a policy on subsidised vehicles for officials. <\/p>\n
Debt collection and credit control policy would be reviewed and properly implemented. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe organogram of the municipality should be reviewed as it also appears to be bloated,\u201d Mabaso said. <\/p>\n
Samwu\u2019s secretary in Mpofana, Sandile Ndawonde, said the municipality had been in disarray since 2010, but things got worse when the council failed to appoint a municipal manager to replace Muzi Madlala who resigned in June last year. <\/p>\n
He said Mario Link was appointed only in December to act in the position. <\/p>\n
The chief financial officer resigned in February, but Nondumiso Mbatha, who also worked for the uMgungundlovu District Municipality\u2019s finance department, was helping out twice a week. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe law does not allow for the municipality to be without these two critical positions,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
bongani.hans@inl.co.za <\/p>\n
The Mercury<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reuters . Durban – Belts are being tightened to the last hole in the Mpofana Municipality in Mooi River where a financial crisis means all unnecessary expenditure – like food at meetings, new furniture and travel – has been stopped. And there will be no Christmas party for staff this year. \u00a0The South African Municipal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-20903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}