“Nearly twenty years into democracy, there is a lot to celebrate as we have made a lot of strides as government, in providing our communities with basic services such as water, electricity, sanitation and decent housing”. These are the words of North West MEC for Local Government and Traditional Affairs, Manketsi Tlhape, when she was a South African Local Government Association (SALGA) North West Members Assembly held at Mmabatho Convention Centre last week.
MEC Tlhape said despite challenges encountered along the way, government has made a lot of progress in bringing services closer to communities. “Amongst the four districts in the province, Dr Kenneth Kaunda has the highest percentage of access to water, at 98.4% in 2011. Ngaka Modiri Molema district municipality is the lowest in terms of access to water at 86.1%. In terms of access to sanitation, there has been a slight improvement in this area as well. Access to flush toilets in all municipalities in the province is estimated at 45.4%, an increase by 8.7% from 2001”,she said.
She continued by acknowledging that there is a lot that government is doing to improve on the current situation. “As government we are trying to deal seriously with poor expenditure of the Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) by municipalities. Some of the challenges that have been attributed to low-expenditure MIG are but not limited to; late approval of technical reports, which resulted in late registration of MIG projects, lack of technical capacity as a result of staff turnover, poor planning and long procurement processes. We are hard at working correcting the situation”, she said.
MEC Tlhape concluded that government has also promoted and made participatory democracy alive. “We have created a local government system that ensures that communities are able to participate and have a say in the development of their localities through public participation processes such as the integrated development plans (IDP) and ward committees to facilitate regular communication between councillors and communities. This was in realisation of the Freedom Charter which dictates that “the people shall govern”, she said.
Meanwhile, the Chairperson of House of Traditional Leaders Kgosi Madoda Zibi appealed to councillors and officials to allow traditional leaders take their rightful positions in the democratic South Africa to effect changes in their communities. “Our province is predominantly rural and our rural communities are run by traditional authorities. For developments to take place, we must be taken on board because we know these communities better. We can’t just be silent partners when issues of service delivery are being discussed, we need to be equal in this partnership”, Kgosi Zibi said.
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