The Nelson Mandela Bay metro special council meeting set to discuss the 2018/19 budget has been postponed to next week. This comes after several opposition parties raised concerns that the budget did not meet legal requirements as the city manager had not signed it.
Political parties like the ANC and EFF did not attend the meeting after the first adjournment, arguing that the issues raised last week were still not addressed.
EFF councillor , Zilindile Vena, says until the legality issue is dealt with, they will not participate in the council meeting.
“Last week we have raised a very fundamental question, around the legality of the budget itself, there is a minimum legal requirement, where a city manager must issue a quality certificate of a budget. We came in when we checked all the documents that were given to us. There was nothing that talks to that, and then we saw no reason of participating in an illegal process, where minimum legal requirements are not met, so we thought of not coming back. We are not going to honour any illegal activity.”
Executive Mayor, Athol Trollip, is confident that a legal opinion will clarify everything.
“The issue around the qualification certificate, let me just say that to get rid of any uncertainties around that we’ve taken a decision in council today that we’ll get an instruction from Treasury, as well as an independent legal opinion about that. In section five it says the city manager must sign an adopted budget, the budget is not yet adopted, it is currently at draft. With regards to the rest of the budget, it was almost identical to the footprint of the assistance to the poor footprint to this city. So our budget is over 85 % pro-poor or poor orientated, for obvious reasons. A lot needs to be done to redress the past.”
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