On Thursday, 23 February, DOCRRA Co-Chairman and Finance Subcommittee Chairman, Brian Botes, attended the second meeting of the KDM Council for 2023. At this meeting, the Mayor presented the adjusted budget for 2022/23 which contains updated projections on both income and expenditure for the current financial year.
Our ongoing concerns remain the revenue losses on electricity, as well as overly conservative revenue budgeting which result in operational budget surpluses at the end of the year. This has a knock-on effect on service delivery especially where the budget to fill vacancies is not spent.
Of particular interest regarding the electricity situation, is that of 50,000 installed electricity meters, only 24,000 are regularly purchasing electricity which raises the obvious question of whether these meters are being tampered with.
The adjustments also indicate that a number of capital expenditure projects are going to be rolled over into 2024 begging one to wonder what has caused the delays.
In better news, the deadline to spend the relief grant for the floods has been extended to May and there is an increase in the budget for street lighting which has been a concern in several of our wards for a long period of time.
COGTA also presented the results of their assessment of KDM. The key take-away from this assessment is that KwaDukuza under-performs the other significantly poorer local municipalities in the iLembe District. Overall performance for 2022 was a lowly 57%, down 11% from 2021.
DOCRRA regularly attends and provides feedback on KDM Council meetings as well as meetings regarding the IDP and MPAC to keep our elected and appointed officials accountable.
If you would like to support this work, please consider becoming a member of DOCRRA via our website at www.docrra.co.za.
