Deputy President Paul Mashatile has assured Members of Parliament (MPs) that the State is attending to issues facing local government.
The Deputy President on Friday said the challenges are multi-dimensional and primarily rooted in governance, institutional capacity, poor financial management and political instability.
“To this end, we have conducted oversight visits to six provinces to ensure that we resolve the challenges of poor governance and lack of service delivery in these areas,” he said.
The Deputy President was responding to questions in the National Assembly on a range of issues facing the country.
Mashatile said outreach programmes were conducted in North West, Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape.
“This was to ensure that we resolve challenges of poor governance and lack of service delivery in these areas,” he explained, adding that they also identified areas of improvement for coordinating service delivery related to infrastructure backlogs and essential services.
The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) has identified 66 out of 257 municipalities as those that need support.
The State, Mashatile said, is also working through the District Development Model (DDM) to improve intergovernmental relations on policy planning, budgeting and execution.
“Together with the Department of COGTA, we established what we call the Result Management Office (RMO), which will be used to strengthen this work.”
The RMO will focus on ensuring that municipalities improve service delivery with support and capacity from the war room.
It will also act as an engine for integrated service delivery that links to the community, coordinates profiles and integrates service delivery.
The State is also looking at addressing resources, capacity and skills in the local government space.
It also plans to facilitate improvements in planning, coordination, execution, monitoring and reporting on the delivery of projects.
“We aim to create resilient, sustainable and cohesive communities, where municipalities serve as catalysts and enablers of development,” said the Deputy President.
In addition, he said government will be looking at the hardships facing the City of Johannesburg. – SAnews.gov.za
