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ACDP councillor Lance Grootboom, backed by the municipal public accounts committee, has demanded clarity on how the Nelson Mandela Bay metro plans to clear more than R28bn in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure from its books.
The committee has given the metro until June 30 to provide a detailed roadmap, timelines and accountability measures for delivering on the clean-up plan approved by council.
Grootboom initially proposed a seven-day deadline for submission of a detailed report, but this was extended to the end of the month when a top official indicated that more time was required.
The cumulative unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure run up by the Bay is the highest of any South African municipality and has been incurred over a number of financial years.
The city’s failure to deal with the issue has triggered threats by the National Treasury to withhold portions of the government’s grant funding to the municipality.
Presenting a motion at a municipal public accounts committee (Mpac) meeting on Monday, Grootboom said the city had recently adopted an irregular expenditure reduction strategy and action plan.
“That action plan put up a comprehensive way of how we’re going to deal with our UIFWE [unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure].
“Now, that plan gave us a phase one, which was a target, and it was running from April 20 up until June 30, which mandates that a minimum of 10% of the total cumulative UIFWE balance be fully resolved [by being] written off by council.
“We also recognise that our UIFWE [is] sitting at roughly over R28bn and that we will have to look at the historical transactions before June 30,” Grootboom told the meeting.
His motion says: “The administration must supply a technical blueprint demonstrating how the municipality will practically ensure that absolutely no new prohibited expenditure is incurred across any directorate from July 1 2026 onward.
“This submission must explicitly document the specific internal financial, transactional and management controls that have been updated to block illicit or noncompliant routing.
“To verify institutional compliance and confirm that these tracking structures are operational, the administration must submit the official attendance registers, meeting minutes and approved resolutions from the designated internal bodies.”
Grootboom told the meeting that the strategy “explicitly asserts a target of zero new UIFWE from July 1, 2026″.
He said: “I get the feeling we only adopted the strategy to get the National Treasury off our backs.
“To date, Mpac hasn’t received one UIFWE matter except for the one we brought, the one we brought from council. There’s been nothing so far.”
Grootboom said the strategy had been given the green light by the Treasury.
“If these items aren’t coming to us, we’re going to lose money at the end of the financial year, and Mpac is going to look like a committee that’s not doing its job.”
DA councillor Gert Engelbrecht requested that an irregular expenditure register be provided to Mpac.
“It’s clear that we’ve been asking and pleading for the register as well as items to come to Mpac, but we’re not getting it.
“From now on, I believe we should take the approach that the CFO bring us the UIFWE register.
“It baffles my mind that we actually lost the meeting earlier this month due to there not being any items on the agenda.
“We warned in December last year that once again, they are going to withhold grant funding.
“Since December, no UIFWE have come again this year. We’ve not done any UIFWE items this year,” Engelbrecht said.
DA councillor Werner Senekal seconded Grootboom’s motion, and the item was carried.
However, Mpac chair Luxolo Namette proposed that, rather than within seven days, the report be tabled at the next scheduled Mpac meeting on June 30.
Acting city manager Lonwabo Ngoqo said he agreed with the item but referred the matter to chief financial officer Jackson Ngcelwane, who indicated that seven days was not sufficient.
In December, the Treasury wrote to Ngoqo, threatening to withhold grant funding after the city failed to respond to previous notices.
“This step is necessitated by the municipality’s persistent failure to address unauthorised, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure ... as required in terms of Section 32 of the MFMA [Municipal Finance Management Act].
“Additionally, the municipality has failed to implement consequence management as required under Chapter 15 of the MFMA read with the Municipal Regulations on Financial Misconduct Procedures and Criminal Proceedings, 2014 (‘Financial Misconduct Regulations’),” Treasury director-general Duncan Pieterse wrote.
The city’s next deadline to submit reports to the Treasury on its irregular expenditure is July 31.
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