Kenyan delegation visits Midvaal

MEYERTON. – A delegation of government officials from Kenya visited the Midvaal Local Municipality on April 28, to learn more about a performance system used by the municipality.

Five delegates attended from a county in Kenya, and they travelled to the Govan Mbeki Local Municipality as well as Midvaal. The performance system in which they were interested is the E-Perform system developed by Price Waterhouse and Coopers. According to legislation, every municipality in South Africa must have in place a performance management system used for monitoring and reporting purposes, to ensure that targets and objectives are met. Midvaal uses the E-perform system to achieve this. According to Midvaal’s municipal manager, Mr Albert de Klerk, one of the lessons learned through this meeting was that South Africa is still a young relative to other African countries.

One of the examples he noted was that Kenya has adopted systems of governance very close to the legislation used by South Africa in terms of the Systems and Financial Acts of South African Local Government, but a few years ahead of South Africa. There were discussions regarding the possibility of Midvaal Local Municipality working more closely with their Kenyan counterparts in the future on projects relating to performance systems, IT, governance and the role of agriculture in the economy and society.