Cabinet has assured residents of the Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality that a decision on how to address the municipality’s current challenges will be communicated soon.
Cabinet made the pronouncement at its meeting on Wednesday, said Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele during a media briefing on Thursday.
At the meeting, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana briefed Cabinet on recent consultative engagements held with key role players and stakeholders in the municipality.
In April last year, Cabinet approved an intervention in the municipality in terms of Section 139(7) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996, read together with Section 150 of the Municipal Finance Management Act, 2003 (Act 56 of 2003).
“The Enoch Mgijima Municipality had been experiencing significant financial and service delivery failures for a long time before the intervention,” said Gungubele.
Last week Dlamini Zuma visited the municipality and has committed to work with all relevant stakeholders in the troubled council to address the community’s concerns, including calls for its dissolution.
According to a report tabled before Parliament last year, a financial recovery plan was developed for the municipality, but the implementation thereof did not yield the desired results. The previous municipal council failed to play its oversight role.
Parliament in September heard that that municipality’s financial crisis was persistent, with material breach of its obligations to provide basic services. It also failed to honour its financial commitments, a state of affairs that necessitated national government intervention.