By Bhekisisa Mncube
Durban – The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Public Works - Mtubatuba Sub-District Office - scooped the Gold Award at the Premier’s Service Excellence Awards.
The glittering event, held at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre (ICC) in Durban on Tuesday night, was a joyous occasion marked by song and dance.
The KwaZulu-Natal Premier’s Excellence Awards are aimed at instilling the principles of Batho Pele (meaning putting people first) in the public service.
The Mtubatuba Sub-District Office serves the whole of Umkhanyakude District by providing infrastructure delivery and property management.
The office has minimised unnecessary spending by adopting a system of performing minor and cost effective projects in-house.
District Manager Philile Zulu said after winning the award: “The commitment of my staff in delivering services to our customers is unbelievable. They go out of their way to ensure that even with limited resources at our disposal, coupled with the fact that we are in a rural district, we put our customers first in all that we do.”
KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Human Settlements and Public Works, Ravigasen Ranganathan Pillay, praised the commitment of his staff.
“The award is long overdue. All I can say is well done to the winning staff members. They have set a benchmark not only for the department as a whole but throughout the rest of the provincial public service,” Pillay told SAnews.
He said excellence was a result of sustained hard work and staff being given credit where it is due. “There are thousands of good people in the public service doing excellent work but are not recognised. All they need is recognition and encouragement,” he said.
He added that the challenge now was to replicate the winning excellence model throughout the department and to deepen the culture of excellence and the ethic of hard work.
Pillay’s other department, the Department of Human Settlements, also received a certificate of commendation for its housing delivery excellence record. The MEC heaped praise on all other winners in various categories.
Other certificates of commendation went to the Department of Community Safety and Liaison (Uthungulu District Team) and the Department of Health (Mosvold Hospital Ngwavuma).
Silver Awards winners included the eThekwini Municipality (Department of Parks, Recreation and Culture), KZN Provincial Treasury (Internal Audit Services), and the Department of Education (Pinetown District Office).
Bronze Awards went to the Department of Arts and Culture (Southern Region), Department of Transport (Pietermaritzburg Cost Centre), Department of Social Development (KwaMaphumulo), Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs (Pietermaritzburg and Ladysmith) as well as the Department of Sport and Recreation (Amajuba District Office).
In his address at the awards dinner, Premier Dr Zweli Mkhize said the awards provided the leverage needed to move public servants from the then prevailing bureaucratic culture of an inward focus on red tape, to an external focus on customers and their needs as central to everything the government does. – SAnews.gov.za
