DA cries foul over appointment of new Sundays River Municipality CFO

Kirkwood - The Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Eastern Cape on Thursday again accused the Sundays River Local Municipality of violating legislation in the process of appointing its Chief Financial Officer.

"Less than a month after having violated Section 30 (2) of the Municipal Structures Act by purporting to have passed the municipal budget with far less than a majority of the vote, the rogue Sunday’s River Valley Municipality has struck again by appointing a permanent Chief Financial Officer in an irregular manner, violating sections of the Municipal Finance Management Act," said Vicky Knoetze MPL - DA Eastern Cape Shadow MEC for COGTA.

"Despite having written to the MEC of COGTA, Xolile Nqata, to intervene as a matter of urgency and investigate how the Municipality have appointed someone that did not have the required competency levels for the position of CFO, the Democratic Alliance in the province noted with concern on Wednesday, that the MEC has gone ahead and condoned the appointment."

She said that concerns were raised by the Democratic Alliance opposition members in the Council in terms of the appointment of the CFO in Sunday’s River Valley Municipality.

"[This was] due to the fact that out of the five candidates interviewed for the position, the successful candidate that was permanently appointed as CFO was the only one rated as ‘basic’, whereas the other four candidates were all rated as ‘competent’," Knoetze said.

"The Democratic Alliance has further learnt that one of the four unsuccessful candidates has already approached the courts, which will result in the ratepayers having to fork out even more money to defend the actions of a rogue municipality.

"This raises concerns, as section 83 (1) of the Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act explicitly states that the chief financial officer and other financial officials of a municipality must meet the prescribed financial management competency levels. Section 107 of the Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act further states that any chief financial officer must meet the prescribed financial management competency levels.

"This is exactly the type of actions that has resulted in the shocking state of South African Municipalities as pointed out by the Auditor General, Kimi Makwetu on the 26th of June. The poor state of the financial audit outcomes are brought about by a lack of accountability and poor financial performance management by local government municipalities."

Knoetze added that the Democratic Alliance in the Eastern Cape is yet again appealing to the new MEC of COGTA, Xolile Nqata "to rise to the occasion and intervene in municipalities where the letter of the law is blatantly being ignored resulting in possible devasting consequences such as in Sunday’s River Valley Municipality where the residents might be negatively affected in terms of service delivery in that the budget was not passed and will now be handled by a CFO that only rated basic instead of competent".

"The Democratic Alliance is the only party that fights for rule of law, fair and legal processes and procedures so that the people will not be negatively effected by poor service delivery and cadre deployees and rogue municipalities that fail to take accountability for their actions."

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