This was revealed by the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs in its response to questions from the DA in the Gauteng provincial legislature. The municipality is battling lacking refuse removal, potholes, and deteriorating infrastructure in Vereeniging, Vanderbijlpark and surrounding townships.

Emfuleni DA mayoral candidate Kingsol Chabalala said the party will continue to demand answers until those responsible for the abuse of municipal resources are held accountable.

“Despite this excessive spending on overtime, there is no visible improvement in service delivery across Emfuleni,” said Chabalala. “This raises questions about where this money is actually going.”

“If nearly R700m is truly being spent on employees working extra hours, residents should be seeing cleaner streets, quicker repairs to water leaks, functioning electricity infrastructure, and a municipality that responds to their needs. Instead, conditions continue to deteriorate.”

This reckless spending is an insult to struggling residents who deserve clean streets, reliable infrastructure, and accountable leadership, he said.

Residents of Emfuleni recently spent three weeks without electricity after a fire at the Town substation. Even now, not all residents have power due to intermittent outages affecting consumers in the Bonnane, Stephano Park, and CW areas following the restoration of power at the substation.

The municipality urged residents to report vandalism-related outages following the restoration of electricity in some areas. Areas without electricity are those where critical infrastructure, such as cables, has been stolen or where electrical distribution boxes, commonly known as green boxes, have been vandalised.

“After the Town substation’s power supply was restored, the municipality is responding to frequent outages that impact customers in Bonnane, Stephano Park, and CW areas,” it said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the NPA is preparing to prosecute the municipality on multiple charges for allegedly contaminating the Vaal River.

The case against the municipality was postponed to Monday, 4 May, in the Vereeniging Magistrate’s Court after the NPA said it would add further charges in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act.

Opened by the FF Plus back in 2020, the case marks a significant moment in a long-running environmental and human rights crisis affecting communities in Evaton, Sebokeng, Vaal Oewer, Vanderbijlpark, and Vereeniging.

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OFM News/Zenande Mpame sm