Ditsobotla on its way to financial recovery after 15 years under administration, says municipal manager

The municipal manager for one of the North West’s most notorious municipalities, Ditsobotla Local Municipality, says governance and administration are slowly stabilising.

Ditsobotla has been in and out of administration or intervention from the province and national government for more than 10 years.

The Citizen spoke to Olaotswe Bojosinyane about the progress the municipality is making in ensuring good governance and stabilising the city’s finances.

“There are a lot of issues, which in my mind are still outstanding when you look closely into the financial recovery plan; there are a lot of issues which need to be attended to.

“But currently I can say that we are moving consistently…it might take some time or a few months, but we are trying to move towards a better position in order to place the municipality in a favourable condition,” he said.

How to arrest the problems

Bojosinyane said political issues, maladministration and the lack of supervision led to the municipality falling under intervention.

He believes that he has a plan to turn the municipality around.

“The first thing that you look into as a new municipal manager or the new manager coming into the municipality is the audit findings, the audit findings will tell you what are the issues that are being raised by the auditor-general.

“When you look at some of the issues which are the material irregularities which have been identified, in my presence I have attended to three of them; there were issues that were raised years back, we are dealing with them. One which is more prominent to our books or our heads is the non-submission of annual financial statements, which we have turned a corner regarding that,” he said.

Service delivery backlog

Bojosinyane says because the municipality has been under administration for at least 15 years, there is now a service delivery backlog.

“The functionality of the municipality was at stake; the municipality was not performing or executing its constitutional responsibilities, especially where the council is not properly functioning,” he said.

Stability

Bojosinyane said he is pleased to confirm that the municipality is able to pay salaries and provide basic services under the circumstances.

“When I came in, there were stages where we did not pay salaries, and currently for the past 12 to 13 months we are at par; we are also paying medical aids, we are also trying to attempt to pay the pension and something positive is happening under the ground,” he said.

Bojosinyane says other municipalities can learn from the story of Ditsobotla and the effects of poor governance.

“If the municipal council is not properly constituted or making sure that they are looking into the administration, the administrators, being the officials, they can take advantage of that because they are not monitored; they are not supervised. As a result, everyone is not accountable to anything,” he said.

“The most important thing, which is also critical, is accountability and also making sure that you do have committees which oversee the administration, committees which ensure that we report on a quarterly basis.”

Not out of the woods yet

On the other hand, DA member of the provincial legislature, CJ Steyl, told The Citizen that Ditsobotla has a history of political violence and has effectively collapsed.

“We had gunshots outside the municipal building; we had two speakers, two mayors, two municipal managers. People were striking, there was no service delivery, and so we petitioned the national government to intervene under section 139 (7) and a year now under that administration, the governance has stabilised, but we have not yet seen improvements in actual service delivery,” he said.