All hospitality and catering services to the City of Joburg have been suspended by Joburg Theatre’s Stages restaurant due to non-payment by the municipality.
The city has racked up close to R3m in unpaid invoices for catering at council meetings and committee sittings.
The invoice, which TimesLIVE Premium has seen, details four months’ non-payment and invoicing from July till October.
Opposition parties have criticised the debt, saying it reveals the city’s dire financial crisis.
The DA slammed the city’s inability look after its finances, warning that there was a liquidity crisis looming.
DA caucus whip Leah Knott accused the speaker’s office of failing to advise political parties on the rescheduling of section 79 oversight committee strategic sessions, which were cancelled in September, allegedly due to a botched procurement process.
“When a formal request was sent for urgent consultation on the rescheduling of these critical meetings, the DA was advised to consult with the chair of chairs as they did not have this information. These committees are where councillors hold the executive to account on service delivery to residents.
“It begs the question whether the scheduled September 2023 council meeting was cancelled, not due to the issues at metro centre or inability to find an affordable venue, but because the legislature has lost complete control of its own procurement processes and is spending way beyond its means,” said Knott.
The metro centre was recently declared an uninhabitable safety hazard, with mayor Kabelo Gwamanda and his executive announcing a decision to vacate its 3,000 employees from the building after a fire from a faulty transformer caused its closure.
In addition, the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC), the entity responsible for the city’s buildings, issued a notice calling on the city manager to immediately vacate all staff, announcing a proposed R2bn refurbishment of the council precinct.
Knott slammed the stifling of political parties’ right to oversight as a contravention of the constitution and the rights of citizens.
“Councillors are also still waiting on responses to numerous questions posed to the executive since November 2022. The speaker’s office responses are not only lacklustre but also give no clear direction as to when these responses will be issued.
More than 3,000 employees, who are supposed to be serving the residents of the city of Johannesburg, are currently ‘working from home’. However, they are doing so without access to their work e-mails and landlines — a move which is a clear sabotage to the residents of the city
— Nobuhle Mthembu, ActionSA caucus leader
ActionSA joined in on the criticism of the executive’s handling of city coffers, citing its grave concern about the financial status of the city.
Party caucus leader Nobuhle Mthembu said, with the city’s R80.9bn budget, it should be in a position to honour its financial obligations, but the opposite is the case.
“This begs the question as to how many service providers this government of local unity owes. Is this the reason the previous council sitting was cancelled?”
Mthembu said the money owed to service providers was another indicator of how the city was crumbling under this administration, calling it a “fiasco”.
“To add insult to injury, more than 3,000 employees, who are supposed to be serving the residents of the city of Johannesburg, are currently ‘working from home’. However, they are doing so without access to their work e-mails and landlines — a move which is a clear sabotage to the residents of the city.”
The party called on all other service providers in the same predicament, having rendered services without payment, to come forward.
However, the finance department, led by MMC Dada Morero, dismissed claims that the city is broke, defending the non-payment as a mere “delay”.
“The delays in payment were due to an internal administrative glitch in our processes. The city would like to put on record that it has processed the said outstanding amount owed to the Joburg Theatre,” it said.
The department revealed they have adopted an e-procurement system to streamline all the procurement services across all the city’s departments and entities.
“This is to ensure procurement in the city becomes digitised, so that the city works smart, faster, effectively and efficiently.
“This unified procure-to-pay portal will simplify and speedily streamline all the city’s procurement processes from tendering, sourcing to invoice processing and payment. This will avoid invoice processing delays and payments of suppliers.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.