There is a growing sense of positivity within the Newcastle Municipality, as a new hope slowly dawns on the local government entity. This optimism comes as the municipality finally passed a funded budget for the 2024/2025 financial year.
The Municipality Council approved the funded budget at the Council Chambers on 27 June 2024.
This marks a significant milestone for the cash-strapped municipality, which for the past four years has been operating with an unfunded budget through a budget funding plan, cost containment strategies, and other revenue enhancement initiatives aimed at improving the municipality’s financial position.
“It must be pointed out, however, that the Municipality still has service delivery challenges and a below National Treasury collection rate norm of 95%. This therefore calls for intensive efforts to do collection property rates and service charges based on water, electricity and waste collection among revenue services,” stated the Newcastle Municipality’s Communications Unit.
The Communications Unit further explained that stringent measures and fiscal discipline are essential for the Municipality to not only maintain its budget funding position but also to enhance sustainable service provision and curb fraud, corruption, and maladministration, including enforcing consequence management.
Newcastle’s Mayor, Councillor Xolani Dube, highlighted that the Municipality has been facing severe financial challenges, which resulted in the implementation of an unfunded budget.
Hence, passing the funded budget in the council meeting marked a victory for the coalition government led by the IFP. “This achievement shows that we are on course to achieve our vision of ensuring that by 2035, Newcastle will be a resilient and an economically vibrant city,” said Cllr Dube.
The Mayor also noted that obtaining a funded budget for 2024/2025 was achieved through several interventions introduced by the Municipality to improve its financial position, including prioritising expenditure, monitoring high-cost drivers, and implementing revenue enhancement strategies.
“Our efforts show that we are committed to building a local government system that is developmental in the way it provides services to communities and is accountable and responsive to the needs of the community,” concluded Cllr Dube.
Reflecting on the Municipality’s efforts to remedy its situation, Newcastle Municipality’s Executive Council member, Councillor Faizel Cassim, said, “With many challenges such as our collection rate from residents and businesses, it did not make the task easy, especially coupled with a huge inherited debt. I must take my hat off to our accounting officer and his team for keeping our municipality afloat despite the challenges. All in all, everyone from the politicians to our administration displayed true leadership. From now on, I foresee service delivery improving. I urge all defaulters in their accounts to please make arrangements to settle so that the municipality can go back to its glory days, or if not better.”
As the Newcastle Municipality works to improve even further and shed the negativity that has plagued it for so long, what are your thoughts on the above?
Share your views in the comments section below.
Comments 1
Big-up to Newcastle municipal administration and political leadership for bringing hope again in this beautiful Town under leadership of Cllr Xolani Dube, the youngest and vibrant mayor ever have in our town.