More than quarter of South Africa’s municipal employees are in non-existent positions as ”political appointments”, in defiance of official employment procedures, the national treasury has found.
Local Government Budgets and Expenditure Review 2003 to 2009 shows that 28% of municipal employees are appointed to posts that are not reflected on the municipality’s organisational structure.
The practice is especially rife in Mpumalanga, where more than 60% of municipal employees are ”political deployments” who are not catered for in municipal staff structures.
Says the review: ”[This] reflects non-compliance with the legislation governing the updating of organisational structures and the procedures for making municipal appointments.”
The finding reinforces perceptions that third-tier government exists primarily to provide jobs for political insiders rather than services to the public. The review also highlights the fact that the workforces of metropolitan councils are declining — by almost 10% in Tshwane, for example — but largely as a result of costly outsourcing.
”A reduction in employment among metros reflects a shift of employment from municipalities to contractors as a consequence of outsourcing,” the review says. One in five metro posts is vacant, while in 70 of the most rural municipalities the vacancy percentage is 16,6%.
The disparities in staff expenditure show that although the wage bill is rising, vacancy rates and the average cost of employment have risen. On average a third of municipal budgets goes on wages, while 2 532 fewer people were employed in 2006 than in 2005.
”This is somewhat surprising since it would have been expected that municipal employment should increase in response to the demand for services,” the review says.
”Lack of capacity is one of the perennial explanations for shortcomings in municipal service delivery. Core to this capacity problem is the very high vacancy rates …”
For the first time the treasury has released the income and expenditure statements of municipalities in the middle of the financial year to update municipal leaders on how, and how well, money is being spent. The government’s idea is to use these as an early warning system before the auditor general conducts his annual audit.
The mid-year statements underline that most municipalities spend too little at the expense of service delivery. As the ANC sees local government as the primary delivery agent, this is a potential election issue.
A well-run municipality should spend about 50% of its revenue by mid-year to ensure effective service provision. But the review shows this is not the pattern.
Said Jan Hattingh, chief director for local budget analysis at the treasury: ”Normally what happens is that the municipality spends very little in the first two quarters of the year. Spending picks up momentum in the third quarter and in the last three months it is very good.
”The reason normally given for this is that procurement processes hamper spending. But those processes should have already been done in the previous financial year. It’s no excuse.”
Although municipal revenue collection totalled R408-billion between 2003 and 2007, most municipalities are highly dependent on central government grants to stay afloat.
Twenty-seven big municipalities, including the six metros and 21 secondary cities, generated the bulk of revenue raised by municipalities.
The rest — 256 of 283 municipalities — are all heavily dependent on the R76,3-billion handed to them by national government. Many rural areas are almost fully dependent on the state for income.