MPLs really need to be chauffeured

Chauffeur-driven members of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature are costing taxpayers R264000 a month.

The 22 MPLs are driven to and from the provincial parliament by contract drivers, who are paid R12000 a month.

Speaking at the legislature budget hearing yesterday, legislature chief executive Nerusha Naidoo said payments came from the employees' compensation budget.

Most of the chauffeured MPLs are ANC members and five are from the IFP. No DA members use chauffeurs.

Finance committee chairman Belinda Scott said there was no need for alarm because there were justifiable reasons for the members to be chauffeured.

Some of these reasons, according to MPLs who did not want to be named, include medical problems and age.

But DA caucus leader Sizwe Mchunu said there was an abuse of this privilege because some of the members did not meet the criteria for being driven by a chauffeur.

Blessed Gwala, of the IFP, said he had not known that some of his party's MPLs were chauffeur-driven.

"The IFP has no policy on MPLs who are unfit to drive themselves or who need to be driven by drivers employed by the legislature. We had not been informed by our members that they were being driven. This is a matter we will need to investigate," said Gwala.

Some of the MPLs have disabilities and others have ailments ranging from a spinal cord injury to injuries sustained in accidents.

An MPL who did not want to be named said the number of chauffer-driven MPLs showed that there were few young legislators in KwaZulu-Natal.