ELM appoints new COO
Are the days of Emfuleni municipal employees sleeping on the job, claiming maximum overtime without rendering services numbered with the appointment of a new Chief Operating Officer (COO) whose stated mission is increased productivity?
Emfuleni’s local municipality says it has appointed a COO beef up its ongoing upgrade of management capacity to tackle massive challenges on service culture, revenue collection, waste management and running both water and electricity infrastructure.
ELM has not had a COO since 2017.
According ELM, the newly-appointed COO is Modiba David Mogofe who has been described as a fit-for-purpose skilled professional with a Master’s degree in Business Administration and is still studying towards another master’s qualification in Commerce.
Mogofe’s appointment is thus widely seen as another element in place for Municipal Manager April Ntuli’s plan to turn the ailing institution around.
ELM has suffered from a senior management skills shortage for years and over the years many of its top personnel have become embroiled in incompetent management practices.
Severe mismanagement of revenue collection and the municipality’s smart meter programme – which both Dyakala and a former acting Municipal manager shut down without any contingency planning in place in 2019 – cost the authority billions and sparked widespread meter by-passing.
But political insiders said that the fundamental changes in the pipeline for the municipality, such as completely restructuring its electricity business and revenue flow out to Eskom, and doing the same with Rand Water, necessitated creating the post again.
Mogofe’s professional track record was not disclosed by ELM.
