Nearly R700 million has been spent on overtime by the Emfuleni Local Municipality over six years, despite worsening service delivery failures that have left residents living among sewage spills, uncollected waste and crumbling infrastructure.
The shocking expenditure includes close to R200 million spent during the Covid-19 lockdown period in 2020 and 2021, when large parts of the country were not fully operational.
The figures were revealed in a written reply to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature by municipal manager April Ntuli.
According to Ntuli, the municipality spent R91.6 million in 2019/2020, R92.6 million in 2020/2021, R114.2 million in 2021/2022, R108.9 million in 2022/2023, R110.3 million in 2023/2024, and R110.2 million in 2024/2025. In the current financial year, R66.3 million has already been spent.
This comes as residents continue to complain about collapsing services, including uncollected refuse, sewage spilling into streets and homes, and a shortage of refuse trucks servicing communities.
The Star previously reported how the municipality had only five operational trucks serving Vanderbijlpark and Vereeniging, leaving most of its 45 wards without weekly refuse collection. The collapse of basic services has allowed illegal dumping to spread across the municipality, with closed waste-transfer stations and mismanaged resources fueling what critics are calling an environmental catastrophe.
Earlier this year, Mayor Sipho Radebe and Gauteng MEC Jacob Mamabolo launched the “Phakama Vaal” campaign to clean up the Vaal, but the initiative quickly fell apart, and refuse collection soon collapsed again.
Reports show the number of illegal dumping sites has grown from around 308 to over 320, highlighting the failure of optics-driven initiatives to deliver lasting solutions. Residents continue to live with uncollected waste while basic infrastructure and service delivery remain neglected.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has condemned the spending, accusing the ANC-led municipality of failing residents.
DA Emfuleni mayoral candidate Kingsol Chabalala said despite the massive overtime bill, there has been no improvement in services.
“Despite this excessive spending on overtime, there is no visible improvement in service delivery across Emfuleni.”
He added that the reckless spending was an insult to struggling residents who deserve clean streets, reliable infrastructure, and accountable leadership.
Chabalala also challenged that if R700 million is genuinely being spent on employee overtime, residents should be seeing cleaner streets, faster repairs to water leaks, functioning electricity infrastructure, and a municipality that responds to their needs. Instead, conditions continue to deteriorate.
“This raises eyebrows about where this money is actually going. Are employees genuinely working these overtime hours, or is this yet another channel through which public funds are being misused or siphoned away?”
He reiterated that the DA would continue pressing for answers in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature until the true scale of the expenditure is uncovered and those responsible are held accountable. He added that the people of Emfuleni deserve transparency, because spending such massive sums without any improvement in services is unacceptable.
“The people of Emfuleni deserve transparency because if such massive sums are being spent without any improvement in services, something is clearly and deeply wrong,” he added.
The Star
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