MEC’s present here
Executive mayors and mayors
Director-General and other heads of departments
Municipal managers
Executives of parastatals
Government officials
Ladies and gentlemen
It is with great pleasure to welcome all of you to this second Exco Lekgotla for the year 2010. We have just emerged from hosting the successful biggest sporting tournament in the world, the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. It is proper to seize this opportunity and salute men and women in our administration and all other people who made a valuable contribution in ensuring that Limpopo and South Africa at large emerge victorious against all odds. We have delivered Soccer World Cup and we should be proud that our generation will be written in the chapters of history of the world for we have made history in our lifetime.
Our Lekgotla is taking place some few days before the 54th anniversary celebration of the 1956 Women March against apartheid and all its atrocious systems. Once more, we are required to pause and pay homage to all brave women of our country who fought bitterly for the liberation of South Africa and some of whom, correctly continues to further the struggle for women emancipation in this hour of our democracy. The dawn of democracy has created new frontiers for women battles, whilst on the other situations retaining the status quo. Notwithstanding the fact that we have registered great strides in the improvement of the living conditions of many women, a lot is still outstanding.
Programme director,
Our administration is faced with a colossal task of improving the living standard of the people of Limpopo. Our success cannot be measured by the amount of time we spend in meetings, but it will be measured by the impact we are making in the lives of the people. We have agreed that our administration should be action orientated and always be motivated by the desire to make a meaningful difference in the lives of the ordinary masses on the ground. Yes, it is true that everyday we offer services to people; yes, it is true that we report to work everyday as expected and also attend meetings, but the most important question of them all, is what value do we add in the objective of accelerating service delivery to people. What is it that we can name as a living testimony that government has further improved its services in conformity with the articulation of the President that we must be smarter and faster in providing services to the people?
What is it that our administration can proudly refer to as a concrete sign to demonstrate our ability and strength to deliver on the ruling party’s mandate? It is on this note that we need to discover some tangible legacy projects which will serve as our higher key impact projects. The achievements of our administration should be informed by the high impact catalytic projects, which are able to create sustainable job opportunities for the people, whilst at the same time rolling back the wheels of poverty. The mentioned legacy projects should be wide enough to cover a large range of communities, whilst at the same time making a firm contribution in the implementation of our comprehensive rural development programme.
The implementation of the Limpopo Employment, Growth and Development Plan must assist in redefining the provincial growth trajectory, prioritising the creation of decent job opportunities for the people.
We should realign, coordinate and mobilise provincial, national and international resources through foreign investments to realise the discovery of the legacy projects. We have minerals, land and projects that have full potential to attract direct foreign capital injection into the economy of the province. We must have sustainable catalytic legacy projects which will provide a new direction in the war against poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment.
Programme director,
Consensus prevailed amongst us that we must change the manner in which we maintain and service government infrastructure in particular focusing on health care facilities, including emergency services. We have decided, without any dissenting voice, that health care facilities must be regularly serviced in order to ensure that we offer our people better health care services. And we said this can best be addressed through the introduction of new infrastructure maintenance approach, which we will also lead to a long lifespan of our equipments.
We have also mentioned that we must employ service providers with full capacity in order to ensure that we do not have backlogs on service delivery, especially in the rolling out of infrastructure. We must deliver houses and schools to our people within the scheduled period. In the event the realigning of our operation fails to lead us to an alternative destination, whereby the health care facilities are regularly maintained, improved and expanded, then we should know that we have not yet began the journey. The focus on the legacy projects should not relief us from our basic obligation of providing, water, electricity, sanitation and infrastructure to the people.
We must never forget that the underprivileged constitute the bedrock of our present responsibility. It is based on this reality that the African National Congress has declared this period, the era of inclusiveness, whereby communities from all corners of Limpopo will benefit from the economic activities in the province. We ought to be practical in our planning and ensure that we enhance the capacity of government to deliver. We must be aggressive and robust in implementing our decisions. The overview of the performance of our administration, which the Director-General is due to present before this Lekgotla must be engaged in a manner that enables immediate interventions to be employed. Let’s have a fruitful Lekgotla.
Working together, we can do more!
Thank you!
