“Together we can do more to strengthen the Ward Committee System”

Madam Speaker, MEC for Local Government and Housing, Execuitve Mayor of Sedibeng District Municipality, Member of Mayoral Committee, Councillors, Members of Senior Management, Ladies and Gentlemen.

We meet here today on this occasion of the People’s Assembly under the banner of “Together we can do more to strengthen the ward committee system”. We are gathered here today on the eve of the World Aids day, which is a day set aside by the rest of the world in support and in solidarity with people living with HIV/AIDS and to renew our collective commitment and offensive against the spread of Aids.

We are further assembled here a few days shy before we kick-start our annual campaign of 16 days of activism for no violence and abuse against women and children. We want to galvanise all sectors of our society to eliminate this barbaric behaviour as abuse of women and children is tantamount to abuse against humanity.

POLITICAL MANDATE

Madam Speaker, our municipality’s performance is informed by the agreement the Mayor has signed with the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs to deliver on the following critical areas in order to meet the outcome number nine of the government twelve priority outcomes.

These are grounded on developing a local government system which is efficient, effective, responsive and accountable. One that delivers basic services, creates jobs, produces unqualified and clean audits, has proper administrative and financial systems, builds municipal capacity and fills all critical vacancies.

The primary objective is to have basic service delivery orientated toward improving the quality of life, promoting public safety and community development, financial viability, fighting corruption, deepening democracy and initiating a turn-around strategy.

SERVICE DELIVERY PROTESTS

Madam speaker, it is no secret that the first quarter of the year was characterized by a proliferation of service delivery protests. In our operational plans it became clear to us that if success was to be achieved, we would need to formulate a very structured and systematic implementation process.

Among the first questions we posed to ourselves was whether our political management processes as represented by the Mayoral Committee are suited for the tasks at hand. The expectation was that we should deepen political and service delivery work. We specifically recommended that we place basic services at the centre of all our political activity. As such we officially announced a Mayoral Committee reshuffle that provided us with an opportunity to sharpen our ability to give direction, to lead and mobilize resources for the betterment of the socio-economic condition of our communities.

We have done this because our municipality must correctly position itself in both reality and practice as the point of first contact between the citizen and government making municipalities frontline service delivery institutions.

In our interrogation of the then situation wherein our municipality was engulfed by service delivery protest we went on to say we also need to answer the question of whether our municipality is really closer to the people. Are we accessible? Do we report-back? How do we conduct ourselves? Are our institutions of people’s power truly functional and developmental in character?

If there is one lesson we learned from the demonstrations during that particular time was that we need to continue to emphasise the importance of continuous contact between the municipality and the people, to avoid opportunistic elements taking advantage of genuine grievances of the people in pursuit of their own narrow and divisive agendas that are inconsistent with those of the democratic government led by the ANC.

PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

Among our central tasks is to give community voice in local politics: while the survival of our local government system has much to do with service delivery, it also depends on how citizens perceive the system, especially in participation and ownership of the system. Participatory democracy is not about being at the receiving end of democracy, but being an active participant in the process.  The youth, women, and people with disabilities must be the primary beneficiaries of our development programmes.

Madam Speaker, as part of the turn-around strategy championed by the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Hon. Sicelo Shiceka all Mayor’s have signed performance agreement with MEC responsible for local government and the Municipal Manager has since signed his service delivery agreement.

We believe, despite all the challenges that still remain, that we are on course to achieve full implementation of our operational plans as captured in our turn-around strategy.

Our mayoral committee has correctly positioned itself as a site for deep political debate and is geared towards providing oversight and influencing the work of the administration and deepening public participation. The litmus test of our programmes and decisions should be measured by the extent to which they have the necessary capacity to change the living conditions of our people in the immediate and long term.

Our ultimate goal is to evolve our administration to a level where it is efficient, effective, and cost effective and committed to the strategic objective of our transformation agenda.

As a consequence, it has become necessary to re-organise and revamp our administration towards a commonly shared spirit of service and cooperation in keeping with your strategic goals and to gear it to provide more improved services to our communities within the spirit of Batho Pele.

The deployment of CDWs is on track in all wards. Community development workers have since been deployed in all wards and are now active on the ground and their performance is gradually showing results. A significant number of them have been trained and further training is still scheduled to capacitate their roles. CDWs are deployed to fill the existing gaps and increase the pace of delivery to the poor and the marginalized. These are meant to be public cadres that are committed to the principles of Batho Pele.

We have taken a conscious decision to put in place a monitoring and evaluation framework to track progress and deal proactively with gaps. Chief amongst these is the creation of a rapid response team to decisively deal with service delivery related issues and carefully respond to issues emanating from the presidential hotline.

We have forged a progressive and dramatic break with the past, in that we have moved slowly away from disclaimers. The last audit opinion was a qualified audit and the goal is for a clean audit.

BUDGET

Madam speaker, in the 2009/10 financial year our budget and development programmes have been developed under the context of tough economic conditions coupled with general decline in payment levels and low collection rate, high unemployment rate especially growing youth unemployment, increasing number of indigent families, ageing infrastructure, the migration of people into our area of jurisdiction and the wage curve implications. The combination of these continues to place further strain on our already limited resources especially on the face of general decline of revenue collection.

What must be applauded and made clear is that our budget and IDP is a product of our engagements with our people through comprehensive IDP and Budget public hearings and as such it can be said with absolute certainly that ours is a ward-based credible IDP which means that our IDP derive content from the people through IDP hearings and are an expression of the will and aspirations of the people as opposed to previously consultancy-based or boardroom IDPs.

The 2009/10 financial year had 263 funded projects of which 35 were flagship projects and 43 were ward-based projects. A total of 38 MIG projects were identified in the IDP to the total value of R92 million, and R57 million of which have been awarded which translates roughly to a 62% of the total MIG funds.

A total of 35 flagship projects were identified to the total value of R60 million. The projects have been divided into three areas namely;

• Area 1 consists of Bophelong, Boipatong, Tshepiso, Sharpville and SE 10.
• Area 2 is Sebokeng.
• Area 3 covers Rust-ter-Vaal, Evaton, and Evaton West

A total of about 43 ward-based projects were identified to the value of R43 million in the 2007/08 financial year. There have been roll-overs for the past two years until they were finally awarded in 2009/10 to the value of R40 million. All projects were awarded and the expenditure was estimated at R22 million which translates to 57% of ward-based funds have been spent. These projects were not completed as at 30 June 2010 and were therefore rolled over to 2010/11.

FINANCIAL VIABILITY

During the 2009/10 financial year the Council struggled to pay all its debts as it operated under extremely difficult circumstances as a result of the downturn in the economy. Cashflows were under pressure due to under-collection on the one side and the increase in cost on the other which included creditors, salaries and service delivery related leases.

The year closed with council having operational cash resources totalling R142 126 894 of which R135 130 224 is ring fenced for grant funded projects and R6 996 670 was for operational purposes.

We have finalised the back-log for 50% write-off, in terms of the policy on recoverable debt and writing off irrecoverable debt. The challenge remains to be on the implementing collection measures on arrear accounts, collection of provincial and national government claims for rates services and collection on all government departments accounts outstanding for basic services like water and electricity.

Revenue Enhancement

The capacity of a municipality to deliver services is highly dependent on its ability to bill and collect revenue from its own sources. It is for this purpose that we are initiating an accelerated drive to encourage our communities to pay for municipal services. We are embarking on this concerted campaign to increase our revenue so that we can be in a position to expedite the delivery of essential services to all our people in our area of jurisdiction. The failure to pay will ultimately lead to the total collapse of our municipality.

We are beginning to see a decline in our revenue base due to high levels of indigents and inability and unwillingness of communities of pay, increasing along with the rate of unemployment.

The municipal debt is mounting and this has affected the ability of the municipality to effectively discharge its mandate of delivering services to its residents.

We have no illusion of quick fixes, however, we know that the radical transformation of our communities cannot emerge spontaneously from the ‘invisible hand’ rather conscious political decisions must be made and instruments such as the budget and IDP should be used to change the economic participation and development patterns in our communities. We need to revatilise our ward committee system.

Madam Speaker, despite on-going pessimism and cheap talk about our state of finances circulating in some quarters of our communities, it is our strong and well considered view that our municipality’s development plans are sound; however, challenges are around strengthening capacity, transforming the financial system and achieving greater co-operative governance grounded on deepening public participation.

Our call for residents to pay for their municipal service is all about changing the face of our communities. It is all about restoring the dignity of a people tormented by many years of apartheid and colonialism. It is about improving the material and economic conditions of our people. It is about shaping the historical landscape of our beautiful region for future generations. This call is a call of a better life for all.

Madam Speaker, it is not only enough that we spend what we budgeted for but what is more important is the quality of that spending and its impact of our communities. We are further seeing serious empowerment initiatives being made in targeting women and resources directed on youth development programmes. All these programmes communicate a clear message that: “It is time to deliver to ensure that tomorrow is indeed better than today”.

We continue to strengthen the full participation of our communities in our IDP public hearings and ward committees. The challenges rest with their functionality and the extent to which ordinary people are provided the necessary space to be full and active participants of their own development.

Madam Speaker, as revolutionary, progressive and ground-breaking as it may seem, the question must still beg - How can we remodel this ‘People’s Assembly programme? How can we do it better in order to make it a tool that will in reality make sure that the things that we have been planning all the year begin to become reality on the ground and that the delivery of services take place? How often do we use ward committees and how do we engage with them in order to get to the bottom of the priorities of the communities?

We will tell no lies about our weaknesses and strengths. We will also be bold enough to own up to our failures and cautiously celebrate our successes. In conclusion, we want to state without fear of contradiction that “a better Emfuleni is indeed in the making”.

I thank You!!