Turning around Local Government and making it an effective, efficient, accountable and responsive delivery machine for citizens requires skilled, competent, accountable and responsible human resources, to ensure that our municipalities deliver quality services quicker and smarter, which in turn will contribute meaningfully to the building of a better life for all.
Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Sicelo Shiceka, said this today to delegates attending the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) Human Resources Policy conference taking place in Polokwane.
Minister Shiceka told delegates that to deliver quality services to the people will require the successful implementation of the Local Government Turn Around Strategy (LGTAS) and more importantly, a local government cadre of a special type. “These must be skilled and competent cadres capable of delivering. It must be cadres who are servants of the people and who work selflessly and diligently,” he said.
He further added that local government needed cadres who would account to the people at all times, while at the same time they would be committed to rooting out corruption and ensuring good governance.
“Local government requires cadres who will ensure that people have access to basic services such as water, electricity and sanitation; cadres who will ensure that decent jobs are created. This sector of governance, and the nation, requires a cadre who will work tirelessly to ensure that there are decent jobs, decent human settlements, the growth of the economy happens and there is a building of sustainable livelihoods in both urban and rural areas,” Minister Shiceka said.
Under the banner of “repositioning local government human resource management for the enhancement of service delivery”, the conference takes place a few months before the next local government elections in 2011 and at a time when parliament is calling for comments and inputs from the South African public on the proposed changes to the Local Government Municipal Systems Act, some of which impact directly on municipal staffing issues.
The professionalisation of local government administration had become more critical for ensuring stability and the good functioning of local government. “We need to engage with the matter head on. Those who will be going to the national general council of the ruling party should ensure that this matter is discussed and resolved with a sense of the urgency that it deserves,” the minister said.
The conference further comes at a time when more than 95 percent of the 283 municipalities in the country have developed their own Municipality-specific turnaround strategies, which have been infused into the municipalities’ Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) to ensure alignment of developmental priorities and service delivery with requisite resources.
The turn-around strategies are a development from the national Local Government Turn Around Strategy which was adopted by Cabinet in December 2009 as the blueprint for making local government more effective and efficient in delivering services.
For more details and requests for interviews with the minister, please contact the undersigned:
Vuyelwa Qinga
Tel: 012 334 0995
Cell: 082 877 3898
E-mail: VuyelwaQ@cogta.gov.za
Source: Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs
