Cape Town — Municipal trade unions have taken aim at Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi for giving them limited time to comment on legislation that seeks to make sweeping changes to the way local government is run.

The Local Government Laws Amendment Bill, if enacted in its present form, will compel all municipal managers to declare their business and financial interests within 60 days of their appointment. It also seeks to make it compulsory to establish ward committees and to delegate executive powers to them.

A submission to Parliament's provincial and local government committee from the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) said the bill was published on July 2 and interested parties were given until July 20 to make representations.

"We consider the time periods to submit comments extremely short and clearly not aimed at promoting popular participation in the legislation-making process," the union said.

Many civil society bodies, including trade unions, did not have the means at their disposal to study and comment meaningfully on proposed legislation and policies within the proposed time frame , it said.

"This is an issue that must be seriously addressed by government if it is committed to the building and sustaining of participatory democracy."

The union said it was ironic that while interested parties were given limited time to comment on the bill, the department had published a national policy framework entitled Rooting Government Among the People .

The Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union said that Mufamadi's bill was unconstitutional in that it usurped the powers strictly placed within the local government sphere by the constitution.

This view was shared by the Cape Bar Council, which said in its submission that the Municipal Systems Act initially enabled local councils to establish ward committees but the proposed changes would make it obligatory.

"This suggests an executive function, and if so, this would necessarily involve some or other executive delegation in order to make a ward committee properly effective in its statutory purpose, which is to deal with matters of local concern. It is in this context that a concern about the constitutionality of clause six arises.

"If the obligation to create ward committees is accompanied by an obligation to delegate to these committees the necessary executive power to deal with matters of local concern to their wards - this would appear to amount to a prescription to a municipal council that it must devolve certain executive powers", which was probably at odds with chapter seven of the constitution.