Pre-Budget Vote media briefing statement by Minister Des van Rooyen
Deputy Minister Bapela
Deputy Minister Nel
Director-General – Dr Nwaila
Senior Officials of CoGTA
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for joining us today for our pre-budget vote media briefing.
We are meeting today at a time when we are experiencing a wave of attacks and abuse leveled against women and children. We condemn this barbaric acts with the strongest terms possible as they do not have a place in our society. We urge councilors, traditional leaders and others within an outside our sector to play a greater role in ensuring the safety of all people, especially women, children and the elderly.
As you are aware, later today, CoGTA will be tabling its budget in the National Assembly at 16h00. The Budget Votes are an important event on the government calendar to give a detailed account of our plans as CoGTA for the current year.
Guided by the content of the 2017 State of the Nation Address (SoNA), CoGTA will ensure that through its budget, the lives of South Africans are changed for the better. Our plans show that CoGTA is also on track to achieve the goals we set ourselves in the National Development Plan, the Medium-Term Strategic Framework 2014-2019 and our departmental strategic plans.
As highlighted through a number of surveys released by Statistics South Africa, the work of government is indeed being felt by communities in their daily lives. There has been improved provision of basic services, including grid and non-grid electricity connections, potable water in dwellings, sanitation and solid waste management, etc. In instances where challenges have arisen, plans are being put in place to address these problems.
In noting the progress we have made thus far, we will be sharing with you the highlights of our budget vote. More details will be provided in all the statements that we will be delivering in the National Assembly later today.
In an effort to strengthen and improve local government, we are making strides to tackle and root out corruption within the local government sector. In the new financial year we will continue to strengthen anti-corruption measures in local government and intensify our anti-corruption campaigns to improve ethical conduct while working with key partners.
Flowing from the 3rd Presidential Local Government Summit, we have recommitted ourselves to do more as the sector to improve the services we provide to communities.
In the past year we introduced amendments to the Municipal Structures Act to improve the administration and management of local government elections. The purpose of this Bill is to provide for the supervision of provinces and municipalities.
Last year (2016) we held another successful local government elections on 03 August 2016, under the guidance of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Elections that was led by myself. The success of this elections further demonstrated the strength of our democracy. To this effect we thank South Africans for having gone out in numbers to make their voices heard and now we have the majority of municipalities constituted and delivering services.
Since the last local elections in 2016, we have seen a number of by-elections. I am encouraged that the Nquthu local municipality in KZN will finally go to the polls bringing to an end an abnormal situation that existed since the 03 August 2016 elections. The challenges in that Municipality forced the Provincial Government to dis-establish it. To this effect, the by-elections scheduled for 24 May 2017 will indeed assist to further strengthen our democracy. We call on all registered voters in Nquthu to go cast their ballots.
Since the local government elections, we have seen new councillors coming into office to replace approximately 5 000 who did not return. To this effect the majority of the qualifying non-returning councillors were thus far paid their once off gratuity to an amount of almost R260 million.
With new councillors having entered into various municipalities since the 03 August 2016 local elections, we have worked with the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), to ensure the implementation of the Integrated Councillor Induction Programme.
The ward committees are an important element of our democracy. With Municipalities having constituted themselves, these structures are being established across our country. The formation of this community structures contributes to having democracy in action as communities are able to take part in their own governance. A total of 4 067 ward committees have thus far been established. Where these Structures are still to be finalised, we call on all community members to make themselves available to serve, especially professionals.
Back to Basics continue to guide our efforts to build effective and efficient local government. This programme leads the implementation of a coordinated and integrated approach to delivering quality services to the people. To this effect, after the successful implementation of the first phase, his Excellency President Jacob Zuma launched the second phase of B2B.
Implementation of the Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF) adopted last year (2016) is currently ongoing. This national urban policy, signifies that South Africa is well-positioned to respond to national urbanisation challenges and to be a thought leader in international dialogues on urbanisation and urban policy development.
The IUDF’s re-imagined urban landscape seeks to progressively eradicate the apartheid spatial legacy and offers South African towns and cities a new reality. The proper implementation of IUDF will surely assist in reaching our objective of radical transformation of municipal spaces for development.
Community Work Programme (CWP) continues to provide employment opportunities for the poorest of the poor in our communities. The CWP is now present in 229 municipalities, which provided 243 162 work opportunities, as at 31 March 2017.
In terms of the Minimum competency requirements, the department strengthened measures to monitor the appointments of senior managers to enforce compliance with minimum prescribed competencies. The Department intends promulgating the regulations applicable to all staff members below management echelon, during the 2017/18 financial year.
The Architecture of Local Government is important for service delivery hence a discussion document is under construction to address the challenges within the two-tier system at the third sphere (local government). The document will be looking at the inclusive review of the local government system with an aim of arriving at a workable solution that will assist this sector to function and deliver as envisaged.
With regards to the Municipal revenue and Eskom debt, lots of work was done in the last months to deal with the excessive growth of the debt owed to municipalities to the tune of R117 billion as at 31 December 2016. National departments are owing municipalities R2,3 billion, while Provincial departments are owing municipalities R3,1 billion. The work of the National Task Team on Government Debt is making progress in resolving the historical debt and government departments have made commitments to adhere to their current debt.
The Minister of Public Enterprises and I have set up a task team inclusive of the DPE, Eskom, CoGTA, SALGA and the National Treasury to find solutions to the challenges faced by municipalities who owe Eskom. I must say that there is progress in this regard.
The Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) is continuing to change the face of municipalities. As at the end of March 2017, 63 percent (R9,5 billion) of the total MIG allocation of R14,9 billion was spent. Municipalities in Mpumalanga Province have spent 72,42% (R1,3 billion) followed by KwaZulu-Natal that have spent 69,4% (R2,3 billion) of the total allocation of R3,8 billion. Municipalities are also encouraged to increase their investment in other community infrastructure, including cemeteries, community centres, taxi ranks and marketplaces.
With regard to Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA), CoGTA will continue to implement the infrastructure and strengthen its capacity to support municipalities to improve spending by, amongst others, transferring the MIG Programme from the DCoG to MISA.
Free Basic Services (FBS), has been a cornerstone of the democratic government as it assist to ensure that the most deserving among us benefit from basic services. Since the Department of Cooperative Governance has been tasked with the responsibility of developing the standard national Indigent Register (IR), 40 municipalities were supported to update their indigent registers. The South African Revenue Services provided the much-needed assistance in the verification and development of this register.
Through our Local Economic Development (LED) initiatives we were able to support 21 municipalities to implement red tape reduction initiatives as part of eliminating rigid rules that are bureaucratic and hinder decision-making and the ease of doing business. We have, over the years, partnered with a number of businesses who are keen to help build a better South Africa. We are currently reviewing our Business-Adopt-A-Municipality programme to better align our working relationship with the business sector.
The National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) has been playing a central role in coordinating drought intervention plans across the country. The country is still reeling from the severe drought conditions, which is the worst since 1926, especially in Western Cape Province which remains under severe stress as dam levels are now said to be standing at below 13%.
The amendment of the Disaster Management Act 2002 has given impetus to our programmes of risk reduction. The Presidential Local Government Summit that took place from 06 to 07 April 2017, reaffirmed the need for local ownership of risk reduction measures, particularly the benefit of having local councillors and traditional leaders championing community mobilisation efforts to manage local risk drivers.
With regards initiation, efforts are underway to finalise the legal framework to fight the senseless deaths of initiates in some parts of the country. To this effect, the Customary Initiation Bill will soon be presented to Parliament and it aims to regulate the cultural initiation practice. We believe this bill will go a long way to reduce the number of fatalities emanating from this cultural practice.
We have also prioritised supporting the parliamentary processes towards the enactment of the Traditional and Khoi-San Leadership Bill, which will address amongst others the recognition of Khoi-San communities and leaders. It will also support the participation of traditional leaders in municipal councils.
The COGTA Ministry in partnership with the National House of Traditional Leaders is organising the first Indaba of traditional leaders to discuss and address the challenges within this important sector. The indaba will take place from 28 May to 1 June 2017.
We are processing amendments to the following legislations:
- Demarcation Act
- Structures and Systems Acts.
In conclusion, CoGTA will continue to work with all stakeholders to ensure that both the Local and the Traditional Affairs sectors are functioning effectively.
The 2017 Medium Terms Expenditure (MTEF) allocations to CoGTA is as follows:
a) Department of Cooperative Governance: R78.269 billion (99.8%)
b) Department of Traditional Affairs: R145.006 million (0.18%)
I Thank You
Enquiries:
Legadima Leso
083 378 9495
