Business Chamber urges appointment of permanent top management team for Emfuleni
The local authority was to have announced the candidates identified for its new streamlined and cost-effective top management at a special council meeting last week, but the announcement did not take place as expected
By Craig Kotze
Emfuleni’s business community has urged the local municipality to appoint a permanent top management team as quickly as possible to facilitate service delivery and fight corruption effectively.
The local authority was to have announced the candidates identified for its new streamlined and cost-effective top management at a special council meeting last week, but the announcement did not take place as expected.
ELM has engaged in an intensive restructuring and recruitment drive to capacitate the top management of the embattled local authority, which faces not only revenue generation shortfalls, but also chronic governance and corruption issues.
The municipality is also closely involved in projects such as fixing water and power infrastructure with the SANDF but lacks both finances and managerial skills and expertise to turn the situation around permanently in all sectors required.
Sustained and expanded revenue generation, service delivery and combating corruption and maladministration and especially Emfuleni’s culture of non-payment lie at the core of ELM incapacity, said Klippies Kritzinger, CEO of the Golden Triangle Chamber of Commerce (GTCoC)
“We strongly urge ELM and Gauteng COGTA (Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department) to appoint a new ELM top management team as quickly as possible because these skills are sorely needed to address multiple governance challenges in the region.
“Only a permanently-appointed management team can begin resolving these and it is unfair to the many capable managers working at ELM who are disempowered due to not having permanent appointments or knowing if they are staying or going,” Kritzinger said.
The election of a new Executive Mayor for Emfuleni also did not materialise from the council meeting after last week’s formal resignation of Jacob Khawe. Instead Robert Thema was announced as the acting Executive Mayor at the sitting.
By Law, a new Executive Mayor must be elected by council within 21 days of the resignation of an incumbent – such an election is therefore expected early in January.
Mayoral spokesperson Lebo Mofokeng did not comment on why the senior managerial appointments did not take place as was announced earlier by the Mayoral Office prior to the council meeting.
