Johannesburg — JOHANNESBURG is underspending on infrastructure maintenance, judged against national benchmarks, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has charged.

The City of Johannesburg has come under fire for unrepaired potholes on major roads, the most visible sign of an apparent maintenance backlog, but it also faces challenges in extending service delivery.

DA councillor John Mendelsohn said the portion of the City of Johannesburg's operational budget allocated to repairs and maintenance averaged just 2%, according to documents presented to the council last week.

"The 2008 national Department of Local Government's budget target on repairs and maintenance was 6,4%; Johannesburg's is 4,4% short and has been for the last five years," Mendelsohn said.

The city was consistently underspending on maintenance and now faced "a great deal of catch-up".

Figures on the cost of eliminating the backlog had not been released to councillors, he said. The operational budget for the 2008-09 financial year was about R21bn, which included salaries and departmental overheads.

The city was hit hard by a municipal workers' strike last year, which forced it to agree to salary increases greater than inflation.

The city also had to ask the national government for a R1,2bn unconditional grant in order to complete the two World Cup stadiums and the Bus Rapid Transit project, Mendelsohn said.

He said the city was also unable to collect its rates, and those rates and services were inaccurately billed - all adding to the financial pressure.

Parks Tau, the councillor responsible for the city's finances, said the DA was quoting out of context from a presentation made to the council.

He said the city had reviewed its overall financial strategy and benchmarked itself against similar organisations with similar infrastructure.

While the overall rate of spending was the same, Johannesburg allocated more money to capital expenditure than to maintenance.