Maluti-a-Phofung Speaker Mandlenkosi Dlamini chaired the first paperless council meeting on Friday. Picture: Supplied
Durban — Maluti-a-Phofung Local Municipality in the Free State says it would save more than a million rand by holding paperless council meetings as cost-cutting measures.
The municipality now under ANC held its first paperless council meeting on Friday and saved R150 000 by not printing documents that were to be used in the meeting. All councillors used laptops to read through the 1 500 page-document.
The municipality borders KwaZulu-Natal on the north-west and one of its towns is Harrismith which is along the N3 freeway between Gauteng and the province.
Addressing the council, the new speaker Mandlenkosi Dlamini said it was a historic move by the council which is serious about cost-cutting measures so that the little resources should be channelled to service delivery.
He said the time to carry many files has come and gone as the council was migrating to the digital age.
“The little resources we have must be prioritised and channelled towards making the lives of our electorate better. In short, we as the council are responding directly to the call by the Auditor-General that we must save municipal resources and focus on key focuses that will ultimately improve municipal service delivery,” said Dlamini.
He added that on Friday alone the council saved R151 500 by holding paperless meetings if each paper was to cost the council R1, adding that if each page was to cost R1.50 the cost would have gone over R200 000 as the council needed to sift through 151 000 pages.
The council fell under ANC after the Map 16 Movement was removed through a vote of no confidence earlier this month. The new mayor is Masetjhaba Lekaje-Mosia.
The Map 16 Movement is the party that was formed by former 16 ANC councillors who were expelled from the party in 2018 after voting with the opposition. In the 2021 local government the party got 28% and with the assistance of the opposition formed a coalition to govern the municipality. It got 20 seats while the ANC got 28 out of 70 seats. The DA and EFF abstained paving the way for the ANC to take the municipality back.
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