District committee members of the Polokwane Municipality in Limpopo marched to the municipal offices to demand their salaries. The district committees were formed in February after the local government elections last November.
County committees are established to work with communities and councilors on service delivery issues. However, the municipality decided to dissolve the district committees and hold re-elections.
More than 35 district committee members from Maletje, Mankweng and Seshego villages marched to Polokwane Municipality to demand an answer over the non-payment of salaries. They submitted their memorandum to the mayor’s office urging the council to reverse its ruling invalidating their election.
Supposedly, they were elected and distributed in February of this year, but since then they have not received a salary.
“We are Ward Committees, they cannot inform us of the re-score when we are waiting for the scholarship because we have been working for so long. For eight months we worked for our own money. We face the frustration that we really do not know what to do in this moment of time, how poor we are. From February, until today, the municipality sat down and realized that the stipends that they were supposed to give us were worth millions, now, realizing that they will lose those millions, they came with a resolution to say that there must be a relaunch.”
Meanwhile, Polokwane Municipality spokesperson Tipa Selala says procedures were not followed in the election of ward committees and they need to be restarted.
“This process was done outside the prescriptions of municipal legislation, the Municipal Structures Act, which states that only 10 members of district committees should be elected. Therefore, only 10 out of 45 wards obeyed this law. We are in the process of recovery and recovery. We have now written a letter to CoGHSTA MEC Makamu, who replied that the municipality should resume operations by October 14, and we are now resuming. Last weekend we started with the Moletji and Aganango cluster and so the process continues.”
District committees say the municipality should also re-run the district councilors’ elections if they want to annul their elections. They gave the municipality seven days to respond to their complaints.
