MBOMBELA – Premier David Mabuza has pleaded with Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister, Mr Lechesa Tsenoli to give dedicated support to the municipalities in his province.
Mabuza voiced his frustrations about municipalities during a meeting with Tsenoli last week, adding that the provincial government was grappling in resolving the challenges faced by the municipalities.
Mabuza told him that although the provincial government was making progress in certain areas, but there was still a long way to go.
“Sometimes we even think our comrades in leadership positions within the municipalities are failing us, but we realise there are more serious problems which need thoughtful involvement of national government.
Certain problems happen because the leadership in the municipalities is not strong enough.
“It is unfortunate that there is lack of quality leadership. Issues of governance are a challenge. This is the sphere of government that matters most. Maybe we have taken our best leaders and placed them at national government and are far from the people,” said Mabuza.
He further told the Minister that public participation by the councillors was vital and yet there were complaints from the public that the councillors did not hold community meetings to respond to the people’s needs.
Mabuza said the national government needed to have a dedicated team to concentrate on enforcing interaction between the councillors and the public.
He also cited lack of technical capacity by the municipalities as another serious challenge for the municipalities which led to collusion with the people.
He said if the municipalities had technical employees, they would be able to attend to issues related to water, roads and electricity.
Mabuza cited corruption as one of the contributing factors to failures of the municipalities. He said many councillors were doing business with government and such sent a bad message to the public.
“We have developed certain support for the municipalities through our departments of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs and the provincial treasury. We would want to encourage the national government to get a first-hand experience of these challenges in order to make a meaningful support.
“We have observed that some municipalities end up utilising MIG funds for salaries. We have further observed that all our municipalities have problems with Eskom when it comes to electricity.
Some municipalities do not have the capacity to generate own revenue and If we cannot help the municipalities to recuperate the money, we might as well close shop,” said Mabuza.
He said municipalities were coming close to crisis as most of them were using unfunded and unrealistic budgets.
He explained that disclaimers meant that monies supposed to bring the services to the people were not utilised correctly.
Tsenoli was on his first trip of his outreach programme to the province to understand the state affairs and establish good working relationship. He said his department would maximise support for the municipalities.
