Jeanette Gouws, ACDP councillor, Mossel Bay:
The ACDP welcomes the letter by Geordin Hill-Lewis, the mayor of Cape Town, who reacted to the press coverage of the DA-created fiasco about municipal manager, Colin Puren`s salary (Mossel Bay Advertiser, 25 August).
Hill-Lewis correctly states that excellent public officials should be adequately rewarded for their labour since it is they and not the political party that ensure a public institution, such as a municipality, is well run and services are provided.
Mossel Bay has first-rate staff, particularly our directors, who are responsible for the core functions of the municipality. They are all well remunerated in addition to the 14% annual performance bonuses which they receive.
The DA, however, through its Cape Town mayor, is still trying to obfuscate the issue in Mossel Bay which relates to the Mossel Bay mayor, Dirk Kotzé, and his DA councillors, withholding information, which had legal relevance, from opposition councillors.
Hill-Lewis advocates that public institutions should be able to pay high salaries to attract and keep good officials and bemoans the fact that many municipalities do not have such officials and are consequently badly managed and failing to provide services for their residents.
He, however, without realising his own error in reasoning, then complains about the stipulated remuneration levels for public officials which are set according to given criteria in specific competencies.
I can only imagine if corrupt political party representatives were able to set their own salary benchmarks what kind of exorbitant salaries many of these failing municipalities would pay compliant officials.
Lewis also fails to recognise that municipalities, who get their revenue from residents, cannot afford to pay exorbitant salaries and thus his energy might be better spent addressing the concerns of Cape Town residents and ratepayers who are unhappy and also cannot afford DA-imposed rates and service costs.
