It is a welcome proposal by the South African Local Government Association (Salga), last week at its national conference, that it wants a remuneration system for municipal councillors, including the Mayor and Speaker, based on performance and accountability.
Most local governments in the country are on the brink of collapse, with service delivery having come to a standstill while Mayors and councillors pocket a healthy portion of the town’s coffers.
Even President Cyril Ramaphosa has admitted the collapse of local governments. In his address at the recent conference he reiterated a report by the national Department of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs, which showed only 5% of municipalities in the country are financially stable.
Salga is a watchdog authority over municipalities in South Africa and is, among other things, responsible for overseeing municipalities’ providing better, more efficient services to their ratepayers.
As proven, all too often municipalities squander ratepayers’ money on personal gain, which includes paying themselves huge salaries for little or even no delivery. A common complaint is, “Where or even who is our councillor?”
Getting a seat in local government has become far too easy; all one need do is make a few empty promises and hug a few babies. And in return one gets a fat salary at the end of the month for a full five years for basically just sitting in on a couple of meetings a month.
Within business, performance-related pay is standard practice, so why should this not be applicable in local government. Hopefully, a newly implemented system will read: “No work, no pay!”
