Bitou's 'pro-poor' budget under fire

PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - Hardly a week since Bitou's widely hailed "pro-poor" budget was approved it has come under fire by opposition parties.

The biggest point of contention was a statement by Councillor Bill Nel in which he mentioned a rocky road leading up to the approval of the budget which involved clashes with opposition parties.

In a statement this week the opposition - the ANC, IPM and PA - in effect said the clashes came not as a result of the ruling coalition's attempts to improve the budget, but because the opposition were trying to negotiate an even better budget for the poor, based on the community's own wishes.

The dissent came after residents of Ward 4 - the community of New Horizons - expressed their unhappiness about the budget.

"In fact, the matter got so serious that the community shut down the N2 after two of these budget meetings where they felt that the ruling coalition were ignoring their concerns," the parties said in a statement.

"It is the role of the opposi-tion parties to use all political strategies available to it to ensure that the ruling coalition acts in the best interests of the community. We are not interested in wasting the municipality's time, money and resources on unnecessary court processes when we can achieve our goals in much more sophisticated ways," said Councillor Michele Botha of the PA.

Regarding the pro-poor budget, IPM Councillor Noksie Kolwapi said, "We firstly welcome the fact that the DA and its coalition finally acknowledged the term 'pro-poor' and appear to seek to address it. Regarding the pro-poor budget: the IPM executive highlighted the fact that when you investigate the alleged pro-poor section of the policy you uncover the lie. The mayor (Dave Swart) thinks that it is pro-poor to require a 50% up-front payment for a 50% discount. In most cases the unemployed poor are in arrears by about R10 000. The mayor clearly does not understand that being poor means that a R5 000 down-payment is impossible and therefore prohibitive, and most likely would mean that the family will not be able to buy food for six months if they were forced to make the payment. The poor, at best, get Sassa grants which are barely enough to pay for food and shelter. The poor are simply not in a position to accept this hollow offer. We do welcome the indigent rates being increased, but we must ask why it required the opposition to play a game of cat and mouse with the DA's coalition partners to force the DA to finally concede to this policy."

The parties said that Nel's reference to the struggle that the DA experienced for the five weeks leading up to the budget vote refers to the opposition it got from its coalition partner, the PDC, to the budget, and the strategic way in which the opposition parties used this internal battle to secure a slightly better budget for the residents of New Horizons.

The DA and PDC did not want to comment on the opposition's retort.

Read the full statement from the opposition parties

Councillor Michele Botha