Treasury allowing broke ANC municipalities to steal from the poor
10 May 2021
National Treasury must be held to account for the lax controls that allowed municipalities to misappropriate R9 billion in grant funding that was meant to help poor households.
This money was given to municipalities to roll out free basic electricity (FBE) to indigent households in the 2019/20 financial year, but according to the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) basket case municipalities spent the money on other things.
The PARI report makes particular reference to Dihlabeng Local Municipality in the Free State which, despite having a large percentage of households registered as indigents, has not been extending the FBE allowance to any of them.
It’s not enough for National Treasury and the Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni, to bemoan how badly the finances of most municipalities are being managed. It’s their job in terms of the Municipal Finance Management Act to: