Chair, I don't know what the previous speaker has listened to and where - I can't work it out. But I will stick to what I wanted to say.
I have said that in the existing legislation governing local authorities amendments are required other than what is currently contained in the Bill now before Parliament. There are many clauses in this Bill, however, which should be welcomed. Examples of such improvements are the curtailment of the term of office of municipal managers and the compulsory provision of municipal accounts to both landlords and tenants.
Unfortunately there are also disconcerting amendments. One of these is that municipal managers will in future have the sole right to decide on investments of the council. You can rest assured that entities seeking investments from municipalities will be wining and dining municipal managers. Therefore, the door could be opened for corruption. The provision which is made for members of ward committees to be reimbursed for out-of- pocket expenses equally leaves the door open for corruption and mismanagement as there is no definition in the Bill to clarify the meaning of out-of-pocket expenses.
The fact that the formation of ward committees will become compulsory is not as worrying as the fact that municipalities are once more saddled with unfunded mandates. This Bill does not provide for reimbursement to municipalities of the increased expenditure to be incurred by having to pay not only for the out-of-pocket expenses of thousands of ward committee members, but also for secretarial services. In the case of Cape Town, for instance, 105 ward committees must be formed and minutes of all their monthly meetings must be kept.
The capacity certainly does not exist within municipalities to carry the extra workload with the current staff. Additional staff will have to be appointed at great cost. The usage of IDP committees by municipalities would have been more to the point and would have served the interests of the community just as well as ward committees. Out-of-pocket expenses will have to be paid, as I said, to thousands and thousands of ward committee members in South Africa, and I am sure that the municipalities have not budgeted for this.
There are flaws in the Bill, but we will nevertheless support it. Thank you.