KZN COGTA terminates intervention at Indaka Municipality
The termination of intervention by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) at the Indaka local municipality within the stated timeframe is proof that interventions by the provincial government in municipalities do work.
"When in November 2012 this intervention was being extended throughout 2013, progress at Indaka was hampered by unco-operative leadership, poor financial management, inadequate political oversight and vacancies in key leadership positions," said KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) MEC for COGTA Nomusa Dube-Ncube.
KZN COGTA is now happy to report that as a result of the provincial government's intervention and the municipality's own efforts these challenges have been overcome and the Indaka local municipality is now issued with a clean bill of health.
"Our intervention in Indaka was aimed at strengthening the municipality's own leadership, managerial and oversight capacity to ensure an optimal management of resources, particularly in respect of irregular, unauthorised, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, as well as overall service delivery," said Dube-Ncube.
KZN COGTA's interventions in municipalities are always undertaken as a last resort in line with the separate mandates of the provincial and local governments and they are always tailor-made to the specific needs of individual municipalities that require outside assistance.
"We make it our priority to ensure that the municipality we intervene in is capacitated and that its organisational structure is suitably aligned, that it is capable to manage its resources and that it is able to deliver essential services and to fulfil its constitutional objectives," said Dube-Ncube.
KZN COGTA's particular focus in municipalities under intervention is on aftercare to ensure that these municipalities remain viable with respect to financial management, service delivery and effective oversight in line with the Municipal Finance Management Act when external administrators leave.
