The Mpumalanga Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs has hosted the National Local Government Learning Network meeting. The Local Government Learning Network is a forum that brings together government practitioners from various institutions and organs of state to learn best practices from each other to improve service delivery in local government.
The forum is convened by the National Department of Cooperative Governance and is comprised of officials from the national department, provincial Departments of Cooperative Governance, National Treasury, SALGA, GIZ and Municipal Officials.
MEC Simon Skhosana welcomed delegates to the meeting and expressed confidence that this network can contribute positively towards improving the performance of municipalities. “The fact that you have municipalities that are doing very well in delivering services and continue to receive Clean Audit opinions while other nearby municipalities are struggling is a clear indication that we seriously need platforms such as this Network, to share experiences and most importantly to learn from each other.
I trust that the financial experts here tonight have seen our regression in terms of our Operation Clean Audit targets, and before you leave you will impart some techniques to your colleagues on how we can improve and sustain the number of municipalities that receives clean audit, because we must meet the target of 2014, we will not allow ourselves to fail,” said Skhosana.
The Network has three work streams, namely Shared Services/Inter Municipal Co-operation, Governance and Administration and Monitoring and Evaluation. Members of the Network shared experiences on these work streams giving different perspectives from their individual provinces and municipalities.
The shared services model refers to the consolidation and sharing of services by different municipalities. This is done to address challenges of scarcity of skills, provide information and offer services more efficiently. Provinces shared their experiences in this work study and it was evident that there is still work that needs to be done to improve this practice across all provinces.
Discussions were held on Monitoring and Evaluation and it was agreed that there is a need to strengthen this function by Provincial Departments. This will assist with early warning systems, timeous intervention and support to municipalities.
Contact person:
Simphiwe Kunene
Cell: 082 413 3931
