Local government and housing MEC Richard Dyantyi  read the riot act to Southern Cape municipalities, accusing them of dragging their heels in allocating funds for flood relief damage.

Speaking at the conclusion of the Western Cape provincial disaster debriefing in Wilderness, he said the spending of the R365 million for disaster relief in the Eden district was far below projections.

He had expected 90 per cent of this amount to have been spent by now but only 50% had been spent, he said.

Although the speed of spending was not below the national average, he felt that too much time had been wasted with seasonal holidays and municipalities should have prioritised their time better.

The municipalities of the Eden district are required to submit specific plans for funding allocation before the money can be released by the various government departments, but these plans had been slow in coming, Dyantyi said.

Although he did not name specific municipalities, Eden district municipality mayor Rudi Laws said earlier this week that Oudtshoorn and the Hessiqua (Riversdale area) municipalities had been slow to allocate funds.

 "It was lucky that last year?s floods in Eden were declared a national disaster and funding was made available in a remarkably short space of time, but it is no good asking for more municipal infrastructure funding (MIG) if the little you have you haven?t spent," Dyantyi said.

"The Western Cape's inability to spend funds within the allocated time will be used to evaluate future funding in the province." He said bottlenecks in delivery being experienced at some municipalities would be dealt with at district and provincial level and that all municipalities would be monitored over their spending of flood relief funding.

Widespread flooding, due to climatic changes in the region, caused R927 million damage since 2003. Last year's flood damage amounted to R650 million in direct losses. Repeated infrastructure failure as well as poorly constructed RDP houses has contributed to the recurrent losses and increased expenditure.

Dyantyi said municipalities had to revisit their integrated development plans (IDP) and reassess and integrate a disaster management plan into future developments.

"I will no longer be signing off IDPs without making stringent checks that they meet with the department's criteria," he said.

Lack of capacity and experienced personnel also explained why some municipalities had not been able to spend their allocated relief funding.

Dyantyi said that this matter was being addressed and professional engineers were being deployed to various municipalities across the Western and Eastern Cape to fill posts.

Larger municipalities such as Knysna, George and Mossel Bay are in line to spend their allocated funding by the end of June. However, the agriculture department has been held up with the spending of R33-million in the Southern Cape, with less than 50% spent to date. Dyantyi said after April 1 spending should be up to speed.

Armien Benjamin of the University of Cape Town said the planning, design and maintenance of infrastructure had not kept up with climate changes.

Eastern Province Herald