Mangaung Metro: How Not To Ruin a Municipality

Staff reporter

Bloemfontein – The troubled Mayor-less and City Manager-less Mangaung Metropolitan municipality are again in the spotlight this time not over the ever lack of service delivery but over employees’ tax deductions that caused havoc in the capital city, with some employees paid far less than a loaf of bread.

This was after the municipality and the South African Municipal Workers (SAMWU deadlock over -taxation of employees including those who did not do overtime.

According to sources, some employees were deducted between R8000 and R14 000 leaving them with nothing and the municipality could not even come up with solutions.

Jimmy Motse, of SAMWU said the municipality assumed a role that is not theirs and ended up with improper taxation.

“When a person owes tax it’s between them and SARS, not the employer. Even if you owe SARS you negotiate the repayment not what the municipality did.

This was done badly and these are the results of not having a Mayor and City Manager as Motlashung decided to walk away citing threats.

Motse further said the newly appointed MEC for COGTA is helping despite this not being his problem.

“MEC Makume is helping despite the municipality being under national intervention, he is going out of his way to sort this and we appreciate it.

We also want to thank the EXCO again via Mr. Makume.”

With the protest in the municipality, it is not yet known when this will end as services are affected.

Mangaung Metro was placed under administration in 2019 and the failure to implement the recovery plan forced the national government to intervene thus far things are getting worse with each day passing, one day a university student will write a thesis on how to ruin a municipality.

In other news there will be a special council meeting at 10h00 to elect the Chief Whip and Executive Mayor, will the ANC have numbers after expelling 8 councilors and pardoning 3 councilors suspected of voting with the opposition? A senior member of the ANC said it is not 11 councilors who voted with the opposition but 18.

The brutally injured ANC will put the name of Greg Nthatisi while AASD will put the name of Papie Mokoena.

AASD’s Zwelakhe Msabe condemned the acts of violence.

“It is extremely difficult for one to make any commentary as those crying foul aren’t reaching out to us general public and little said about the IEMT the better, they’ve failed dismally.

However we condemn acts of violence as AASD and call on those responsible to urgently open Boardrooms to help get finality on the matters and equally note the opportunistic approach by ANC Mangaung caucus that seeks to exonerate itself by blaming everyone but not itself as they’ve succefully collapsed the Metro for over 20 years now.”

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