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30 days until NMB placed under administration as budget fails, R1.77 billion wasted

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Dear MyPE

Today’s Auditor-General report has once again revealed Nelson Mandela Bay to be the worst financial offender in South Africa, with over R1.77 billion lost to wasteful, fruitless and irregular expenditure under the ANC. This enormous waste of R1,77 billion is a devastating blow to Mayor Jordaan, and finance head, Rory Riordan as for the 5th year in a row, NMB has received a qualified audit.

The 2014/15 Auditor-General Report can be found here.

Having failed to pass the City’s budget on Monday due to legislative irregularities, Jordaan’s administration is now forced to draft a new budget before council is placed under administration on the 30th June 2016, as news breaks of multi-billion rand wastage and financial turmoil.

In the face of this financial meltdown in NMB, nothing could keep Mayor Jordaan from attending the PSL awards in Johannesburg on Monday evening, where he gleefully held soccer balls and smiled for cameras as NMB’s finances and budget faced a very uncertain future.

A dedicated Mayor, whose commitment to this Metro was unmovable, would have been at City Hall working on solving this municipality’s financial disaster. Instead, Mayor Jordaan once again chose soccer and camera flashes over the people of the Bay.

With an already long list of broken promises, the current ANC administration has all but imploded with the recent delivery of a fake metro police service, a criminal appointment to the Head of Safety and Security, no-shows at important debates, no eradication of bucket toilets, no weekly refuse collection in all wards and frequent no-shows at important meetings.

It is time for change that gets our Metro moving forward again. With the DA in government, financial controls and monitoring will be of paramount importance to ensure that money is spent correctly and on our people.

Where the DA governs, like in the City of Cape Town, directorates receive clean audits because money is spent properly. This is the story we need to be telling in Nelson Mandela Bay. On the 3rd August 2016, vote for change so that we can take NMB forward again.

Regards

Retief Odendaal

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.