MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

Looting in the name of Freedom

By

The DA’s exposure of the ANC’s plan to spend R15 Million on Freedom Day celebrations is an abuse of the public purse for ANC electioneering purposes in the name of Freedom Day.

The Democratic Alliance fully supports the celebration of 20 Years of Democracy and we acknowledge that life is definitely better in South Africa now than it was before 1994.

The DA believes that delivering quality services to all our communities is the best way to celebrate 20 Years of Democracy.

We all know the core message of the ANC’s election campaign is “we have a good story to tell”. They now want to tell this story a few weeks before the election by printing 720,000 booklets at the tax payer’s expense.

Furthermore the intended purchase and printing of 50 000 t-shirts at the expense of the public purse is classic ANC electioneering.

One guess as to what colour these t-shirts will be?

In an item to be tabled before Council which was leaked to the DA a budget of R15 080 212.25 has been requested to fund the celebration of 20 Years of Democracy.

In the same item it says: “Municipalities are encouraged to plan modest celebrations, which would not burden expenditure patterns but achieve a great impact”.

Furthermore National treasury has written to Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality specifically calling for all non-priority expenditure on celebrations to come to a stop.

No amount was budgeted for these celebrations in the original budget and there is no doubt that services to all communities will be affected as budget cuts from various departments, such as sanitation, have been requested.

The DA supports the celebration of democracy but will never agree to such an unaffordable budget of R15 Million while our poorest residents are still awaiting basic services such as proper housing, refuse collection, water, electricity and sanitation.

The DA believes that the best way to celebrate Freedom Day is to deliver quality services to the public.

R15 Million could have been used to build 150 RDP houses and eradicate thousands of bucket toilets across the Metro.

Cllr Andrew Whitfield

Related: Utilitarianism NMB Metro Style

The following two tabs change content below.

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.