eThekwini faces critical staff shortages in infrastructure units

AS THE eThekwini Municipality battles to supply water to communities, it has emerged that more than half of the positions in the unit responsible for water and sanitation are vacant.

- THAMI MAGUBANE

The Auditor General of South Africa, Tsakani Maluleke, said in a recent interview with SABC news that her office did not understand why eThekwini has such a high number of vacancies in this unit, considering its size, location, and the budget of the municipality.

The municipality has close to 25 000 workers and a budget of more than R60 billion.

Maluleke was commenting last week shortly after tabling the report on the audit outcomes for municipalities. The audit outcomes revealed that municipalities are still not living up to their mandate, with about 41 of the nation's 257 municipalities receiving good audits. Seven of these are in KwaZulu-Natal.

She expressed concern that only one metro had achieved a clean audit, describing this as a serious indictment in light of the fact that close to half of the country's population lives in metros, which have substantial budgets.

The findings on vacancies in eThekwini have triggered concerns among councillors, as the municipality is facing a serious water crisis, with many communities affected by prolonged outages resulting from water leaks, ageing infrastructure, and vandalism of this critical infrastructure.

Maluleke noted that even large municipalities have not invested in the infrastructure needed to ensure efficient operations.