Ekurhuleni mayor Mondli Gungubele's decision to remove four of the municipality's departments from political oversight will lead to mismanagement being hidden, the DA said.
|||Ekurhuleni mayor Mondli Gungubele's decision to remove four of the municipality's departments from political oversight will lead to mismanagement being hidden, the DA said on Friday.
The metro's legal, human resources, communications and ICT departments, which were formerly overseen by a multi-party portfolio committee, would now be directly accountable to the mayor, the opposition party's mayoral candidate Shelley Loe said in a statement.
“While the DA in Cape Town has moved to improve transparency by opening the tender and mayoral committees to the public, the ANC in Ekurhuleni is closing the curtains so that the metro's activities will not be seen by the political representatives who conduct oversight on behalf of residents,” she claimed.
However, Ekurhuleni spokesman Zweli Dlamini said Gungubele had not removed the departments from the DA's political oversight.
What he had done instead was to personally exercise political oversight on all back office functions, with the city manager exercising day-to-day administrative management.
“Nothing in the executive mayor's decision stops the opposition parties from exercising political oversight on the departments,” Dlamini said.
Loe further said Gungubele's decision to withdraw the ICT department from oversight, when the special investigating unit (SIU) was probing alleged fraud involving R100 million, sent a wrong message about his intentions.
The decision to do the same with the human resources department had to be judged in light of the ANC's ambiguity about its cadre deployment policy and “dubious HR practices elsewhere”.
“His excuse that these departments should not be politicised is feeble and unconvincing since the ANC has already used them as political tools,” Loe said.
Dlamini said the ICT department probe was the result of the metro asking the SIU to examine its procurement processes, as it was unhappy with them. The investigation was well underway.
“It is precisely because of the executive mayor's subscription to clean governance, run by efficient, adequately trained and appropriately qualified officials that this decision has been made. His track record in this regard speaks for itself,” Dlamini said.
In the same DA statement, the party's outgoing caucus leader, Eddie Taylor, said the arrangement of portfolios and selection of mayoral committee members raised questions about the mayor's intentions and priorities.
“The very effective former chairperson of the municipal public accounts committee, councillor Pinky Mkhonso Lukhele has been sidelined and replaced by councillor Tiny Mabena.”
He said Mabena's conciliatory management style contrasted poorly with her predecessor's effective take-no-prisoners approach.
Dlamini said Taylor should “wait and see” what value Mabena
brought to the portfolio.
He further dismissed Taylor's claim that economic development had been downgraded from a full portfolio and tagged on to city planning.
“The executive mayor's view is that in order to realise economic growth and development in this region it is best that it be linked to the bigger developmental plan of the city,” he said. - Sapa
Source: http://www.iol.co.za/da-slams-ekurhuleni-political-oversight-1.1075167
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