of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) in Sedibeng, Gauteng
16 March 2007
Honourable Chairperson
Honourable Deputy Chairperson
Members of the NCOP
Colleagues from other provinces
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Honourable chairperson, I bring with me greetings from the people of the
Free State who had an opportunity and honour to interact with the NCOP last
year from 6 to 10 November last year in the Fezile Dabi district municipality.
We also had the honour of participating in the tabling of the NCOP report to
the Free State during the plenary of 9 March 2007.
I stand here to confirm, with the hindsight of our own experience, that
these visits by the NCOP to provinces are indeed a practical expression of our
participatory democracy.
These are not mere symbolic or public relations exercises because not only
do our people have an opportunity to interact at a personal level with their
elected representatives, but they also empower the NCOP to exercise its
oversight role more effectively.
Honourable chairperson, we firmly believe that the NCOP as a public
representative of our people does indeed play an important role in ensuring
that all spheres of government do not just pay lip service to the legislative
imperative of the intergovernmental relations framework.
Through its law making and oversight functions, the NCOP is best placed to
support the realisation of co-operative governance in a manner that advances
the government commitment to service delivery and then attainment of the 2014
vision of halving levels of poverty and unemployment by the conclusion of our
second decade of freedom.
As the provincial government, we are quite aware of challenges represented
by the imperative of building effective capacity at local government level to
improve service delivery. We use the platform provided through the Premier's
Co-ordinating forum to evaluate progress with regard to:
* the five year local government strategic agenda
* Project Consolidate
* the rollout and usage of the Municipal Infrastructure Grant
* implementation of the Extended Public Works Programme.
We have in the last financial year established a dedicated unit known as
Provincial Government Programme Co-ordination.
Among other things, this unit co-ordinates all government and private
interventions at municipalities and ensures the credibility of municipal
Integrated Development Programmes (IDPs) especially the extent to which they
respond to community needs.
Our outreach programmes similar to this NCOP visit of taking parliament to
the people, have proved to be very instrumental in clarifying our programmes
and priorities to our communities and to receive important feedback on areas
which need improvement.
Through our Executive Council (Exco) meets the People Campaign, we have been
able to re-affirm the notion of a single government located at different
spheres and we have further succeeded in strengthening the confidence of our
people in local government. We use this campaign to present a united front of
government service delivery and we undermine all intentions of isolating any
sphere from collective ownership of problems and successes.
Honourable Chairperson, with effect from the new financial year, the
functions of our Community Development Workers will be co-ordinated from the
department of the Premier. This means that unlike before, the Provincial
government will be in a better position to direct this capacity and resource
into meaningful programmes aimed at strengthening our local government delivery
and mobilisation capacity. All in all, we have a total of 265 community
development workers who are spread across all municipalities.
Our community development workers have been instrumental in the
establishment and support of ward committees. In accordance with the national
guidelines as set by the Department of Provincial and Local Government a total
of 300 ward committees have been established, trained and are fully
operational.
The establishment of the second generation Multi-Purpose Community Centres
(MPCCs), formally known as Thusong Service Centres (TCS) advances our quest of
bringing services closest to our people. To date we have four functional TCS
and three newly established ones where we still need to provide infrastructural
support. Through the PCF and other platforms, we insist that all municipalities
must budget for the establishment of TCS and make provision in their respective
IDPs so that our target of ensuring that each municipality has an MPCC by 2014
is realised.
One of our centres known as the Kopanong Thusong Centre based in Trompsburg,
has been hailed as a national model by the Government Communications and
Information System (GCIS) and was used as a case study during the national
conference on MPCCs held in January this year. In the context of our province,
these centres have greatly alleviated the burden from our people of accessing
information and critical services, which were a problem in the past.
In order to ensure a much more co-ordinate implementation of municipal IDPs,
we are going to rollout the cluster system to both district and local
municipalities. From April this year all our municipalities will be assisted to
rollout the clusters so that at all levels of government monitoring and
evaluation of programmes is systematic and that as the provincial government,
we identify areas of intervention speedily.
Through our special programmes we have started a vigorous campaign of
ensuring that all municipalities establish appropriate structures which looks
into the special needs of women, children, the disabled, the elderly, the youth
and HIV and AIDS.
Honourable Chairperson, we are convinced that the only way to undermine
poverty and ignorance, is to intensify our interaction and communication at the
local government sphere. It is for this reason that as the provincial
government, we will spend a lot of time and resources to ensure the successful
implementation of the five-year local government strategic agenda. We believe
that the confidence our people have in us, must be respected through programmes
which places our people at the centre of their own development
I want to take this position to congratulate the NCOP, and the Provincial
Legislature and Executive Council for placing importance on the rights of the
people to govern.
I thank you
Issued by: Office of the Premier, Free State Provincial Government
16 March 2007
