The DA notes with serious concern the City of Johannesburg’s downgrade from A+ to A by GCR Ratings, an affiliate of Moodey’s.
The implications of this downgrade cannot be underestimated. A city with an infrastructure backlog in the hundreds of millions, will undoubtedly require loans to ensure continued service delivery. The downgrade means that it becomes very difficult for the city to get and repay loans. The current executive has in all practical senses made another funding model for the metro, more difficult to come by.
The DA has consistently raised concern over the lack of good governance in the City of Johannesburg under the ANC-EFF-PA coalition. Especially at the lack of oversight by the Executive in the running of the city.
The ANC puppet Mayor seems to be oblivious to what is happening in his own city. He is being pulled in different directions by the ANC-EFF and PA.
This week the DA wrote to the City Manager, requesting a full forensic investigation into all Activities of the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC) and it was clear from his response that despite him being able to take action, he is unwilling to.
It is also evident that the MMC of Finance is clearly not in touch with the city’s financial state. A COGTA oversight engagement revealed that the city’s Unauthorised, Irregular or and Wasteful Expenditure has increased by 44% all this while the city has an unfunded budget.
Under the Multiparty Government, the budgeting process had been a tick box exercise. We embarked on a rebasing exercise with a view on reducing the budget to at least R59 billion, then we proposed a zero rate increase to get the city back on track. However, all these decisions and actions were reversed when the ANC-EFF-PA coalition came into power.
The DA will continue to monitor the governance in Johannesburg while all DA members on section 79 committees will be interrogating every detail of what happens in their respective portfolios. We cannot sit by and watch the ANC-EFF-PA coalition flush our once beautiful city down the drain.