Limpopo municipalities in workshop to help improve service delivery
Seven dysfunctional municipalities attended a municipal workshop hosted by the Department of Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (CoGHSTA) last Friday.
POLOKWANE –Â The workshops were attended by the MEC, Jerry Ndou, and HOD, Ngaka Dumalisile (formerly Mosehana), Limpopo’s Auditor-General Nthanyi Dhumazi and the MEC for Treasury, Rob Tooley.
Ndou said municipalities are established to deliver goods and services that will promote social and economic development in communities and promoting the quality of life of residents, who expect municipalities to deliver quality services in line with provision of Section 152 of the Constitution.
He said unevenness in capacity leads to uneven performance and solving these challenges require addressing factors such as tensions in the political-administrative interface, instability in administrative leadership, skills defects, the erosion of accountability, poor organisational design and low staff morale. He added cabinet has identified the Back to Basics approach to focus municipalities on the basics of governance and service delivery.
Ndou said municipalities in Limpopo were categorised in three categories based on functionality.
The challenges facing the least functional municipalities are a collapse in infrastructure services in communities with services not being provided at all or at unacceptable low levels, a slow or inadequate response to service delivery challenges, social distance by public representatives. This, he explained, is the result of inadequate public participation and poorly functioning ward committees and councillors, slow revenue collection undermining ability to deliver services, inappropriate recruitment, placements and skills not measuring up to requirements.
The workshop was arranged to support municipalities in the above five identified areas and give hands-on attention and support over the next 18 months to improve the state and performance of the Vhembe and Mopani District municipalities, as well as the Mokgalakwena, Thabazimbi, Modimolle/Mookgophong, Musina and Fetakgomo municipalities.
Ndou said the Provincial Municipal Public Accounts Committee has been launched in line with Section 79 of the Municipal Structures Act to fulfill an oversight function and undertake and manage similar functions and responsibilities for municipalities as undertaken by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) in national and provincial legislatures. The body will have the right to call upon the accounting officer of a municipality or the chairperson of the municipal board of directors to appear.
Dumalisile said dysfunctional municipalities feature a high degree of instability, fraud and corruption and oversight committees are not meeting.
There also is incompetent managers, many vacancies no delegations, chronic underspending, high debtors, no accountability, community dissatisfaction and protests due to the collapse of service delivery, outages, asset theft and poor maintenance.
The municipalities had to present turn-around plans and the way forward was discussed.
