MOSSEL BAY NEWS - "The ANC wishes to clearly point out that it is not a secret that the DA has failed to deliver to the expectations of the people of Mossel Bay who voted it into power in 2011."
"It is now 17 months before the next elections and this failure cannot be left untold. The ANC in council has, in several past council meetings, asked why companies close to the family of Mayor Marrie Ferreira were always lucky to be awarded tenders worth millions. Employment terminations from the municipality of more than 25 coloured employees alone within a space of a year came as a shock to the ANC.
"We want the DA-led council to tell the people what its plans are to provide houses for the people of Mossel Bay and the backyard dwellers in particular," councillor Mbandezi added.
The ANC would like the Mayor of Mossel Bay to answers the following questions:
1. Is it true that Shoprite requested this council to identify and second a community member to serve in their Board of Directors?
2. If it is true, who is that community member, who identified him/her and on whose mandate was such a secondment done?
3. Is there any relations between the alleged seconded people with any member of this municipal council?
4. If it is true, what benefit is this person getting from this secondment?
5. Why is the DA never interested in ensuring that the people of Mossel Bay are treated equally when it comes to the provision of services?
6. Why is the standard of the community hall in KwaNonqaba and other community halls far lower than the town hall?
7. Why has the DA stopped building in-house toilets for the elderly and disabled people in KwaNonqaba, as was initiated by the ANC?
8. Why does the DA not understand that the people in KwaNonqaba also deserve to be provided with descent parking at the community hall, instead of the gravel that was provided for by the then Black Local Authority?
9. When is the DA going to provide upgraded services at this community hall, including fixing damages caused by rioters?
10. Why is the DA stopped building in-house toilets for the elderly and disabled people in D'Almeida, as it was initiated by the ANC?
11. What is the plan of the municipality regarding the unemployed youth of the greater Mossel Bay?
12. Why is there no more a youth council which can address all the needs of the youth in Mossel Bay?
13. How does the DA housing plan seek to address the housing needs of more than 7 000 people of Mossel Bay that are reflected on the Housing waiting list?
14. How is it possible that Transand is awarded a tender to the value of R4m and R3m respectively in the EPWP, which is meant for providing jobs for the unemployed?
15. Why is the DA not interested in ensuring a speedy reconstruction of the service offices in KwaNonqaba?
16. Why does the DA not interested in the construction of gravel roads in Khayelitsha?
(Certain questions consolidated - Ed)
DA responds
The DA responded to the above questions through the following statement:
One can only expect the number of questions from the ANC to escalate with each Council meeting as the 2016 municipal election nears and the ANC becomes more desperate to make an impression on voters, whose intelligence they seem to underestimate.
Mossel Bay is widely recognised as one of the best performing municipalities in the country. The two consecutive clean audits, twice winners of the greenest municipality competition, winners of a housing award, four blue flag beaches, the only functional municipal court outside the Cape Metropole, two very successful festivals arranged annually by municipal staff and the opening of the Haven night shelter for the homeless are just some examples of successes achieved by this municipality.
The municipality provides the first 20KWH electricity and 6 kilolitres water free of charge to all residential households every month and a rebate on municipal property rates for the first R50 000 valuation. Very few municipalities give these free services to all residential households. In addition, poor and indigent households receive the first 50KWH electricity free per month.
While all municipalities have subsidies for indigent households, it is only Mossel Bay, as far as we know, who in addition provides subsidy to poor households whose income is less than R5 000 per month. Mossel Bay is also one of the first municipalities to complete the access to basic services project, which provides one toilet and washbasin to every five informal structures and standpipes within 200m of each structure and refuse removal to informal settlements. Very few ANC-governed municipalities, if any, can lay claim to such an achievement.
The question of tenders is raised by the ANC in every Council meeting and the ANC councillors who are obviously concerned about retaining their position after 2016 are clutching at straws to try to win some credibility in their party.
Tenders are awarded in terms of legislation to the bidder scoring the highest points. No councillor, including the Mayor, has any say in the awarding of any tenders, nor has the Mayor ever attempted to attend a bid adjudication meeting when the awarding of tenders is determined. Supply Chain Management (which include procuring of goods and awarding of tenders) is audited by internal auditors and the Auditor-General and the municipality's clean audit record is a testimony to the fact that the process is correctly followed, free of any interference or corruption. This is probably a foreign concept to the ANC, given their track record of corruption with tenders in the rest of the country.
Ten staff members (and not the 25, as claimed by the ANC) have been dismissed for serious offences such as alcohol abuse, absent without leave and gross dishonesty. These dismissals have been from all race groups and it is disturbing that the ANC still plays the race card 20 years after democracy.
Mossel Bay has a housing plan and was awarded the highest housing grant in the Western Cape outside the Cape Metropole last year. It is in fact elements within the ANC who retard the building of houses by influencing residents of informal settlements not to relocate to better living conditions, but in spite of this, the municipality managed to spend 99.6% of the housing grant last year and hence provided more houses and serviced sites last year than any other local municipality in the Western Cape.
Every year a large number of people relocate to Mossel Bay from across the country. If the municipality is failing to deliver services, as the ANC claims, then this must be the first time in history that residents leave a well-run municipality elsewhere to flock to a town whose services according to the ANC are in a shambles!
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