Johannesburg - Unemployment, R5.3 billion of wasteful expenditure, electricity backlogs, expensive advertising, power outages and loss of water and electricity revenue have marked City of Joburg mayor Parks Tau’s five-year reign.
DA mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba said this in reaction to Tau’s end-of-term report, delivered on Wednesday at the Wanderers Stadium.
“Under Tau's term, unemployment has increased, with almost one in three Joburg residents not having jobs and with unemployment standing at 869 000 people - a rate of 31.1 percent.
“In contrast, there was an unemployment rate of 27.8 percent with 689 000 unemployed people when Tau came into office in 2011,” said Mashaba.
He said Tau had overseen the unemployment rate rise by more than 3 percent and the number of unemployed people balloon by 180 000 over his five-year term in office.
“Today, 756 people join the ranks of the unemployed in Joburg each and every day. The growing unemployment in our city is a scar on mayor Parks Tau’s record and conscience. It reflects the true end-of-term report for the incumbent mayor,” he said.
Furthermore, he said, Tau misleadingly touted the city’s ratings, while his administration and governance had fallen apart.
The Auditor-General has found that his administration has presided over R5.3bn in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
“Notably, the Auditor-General stated that the city had failed in its legal obligation to investigate whether any of this money could be reclaimed. There was also a R68bn electricity infrastructure backlog and more than 300 power outages each month.
“One fifth of Joburg’s electricity was lost in the last financial year, amounting to R2.3bn in lost revenue,” he said.
Over R1bn worth of water revenue was also lost, R850 million of which was lost as a result of leaks due to poor maintenance.
An R8bn debt was written off by the city over the past year as a result of a billing and collection crisis, he said.
Tau had also failed to pledge to fix this immediately if he were re-elected.
“The mayor's lack of empathy for the jobless and indigent people is underlined by how he spends millions on advertisements and billboards to promote himself under the guise of the City of Joburg by spending over R1 million advertising his end-of-term report in newspapers over the past week,” he said.
During his address, Tau said that when the ANC came into office in 2011, it made a commitment to residents to improve their lives through improved service delivery.
“This is exactly what we have been doing as a developmental and progressive local government city region. Although much has been done in the city, more still needs to be attended to,” Tau added.
“There were some people who wanted to pretend that no delivery has happened in the city in the past 21 years, while misleading residents that they could miraculously deliver things that they alone claim have not been delivered. This is very unfortunate, because our record speaks for itself when you move in and around Joburg,” he said.
The Star