PRETORIA – Tshwane Mayor Solly Msimanga on Monday said he was doing his best to deliver on his electoral promises, though the capital city was in a state of rot when he took over after the August local government elections.
“Appreciate that we inherited what can only be described as a mess, with unlawful contracts and costly projects that now have to be completed and some of them undone before completion is in our sights,” Msimanga told reporters at an event marking his 100 days in office.
“The city currently sits with a R2 billion deficit which we are in the process of rehabilitating and this takes time. This starts by being smart, which is specifically collecting revenue owed to the city by various national and provincial government departments.”
Msimanga singled out the national Department of International Relations and Cooperation for taking steps to start servicing some of its debt to Tshwane.
The mayor said his administration has since launched several programmes and mechanisms designed to save Tshwane’s money.
“Chief among these are the strategic sourcing of goods, an open tender system, e-procurement systems which are all, in one way or the other, aimed at curbing leakages in the supply chain process and maladministration and intelligence exercise and cost of delivering municipal services, fraud cases that have been instituted against corrupt officials,” said Msimanga.
“This is to avoid occurrences such as the notorious shoe polish debacle which saw millions of rands lost to wholescale malfeasance by way of inflation of goods that otherwise could have been procured at wholesale rates.”
He said disciplinary processes had been instituted against implicated Tshwane staffers.
The 100 days commemoration coincided with the signing ceremony of performance agreement contracts by Tshwane’s members of the mayoral committee (MMCs).
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