the graduation ceremony of the Community Development Workers (CDWs)
3 July 2007
Programme Director,
Executive Mayors and speakers,
Vice Chancellor,
Religious Minister,
Heads of Department (HODs) and Municipal Managers,
Ward Councillors and Ward Committees Members,
Local Government Sector Education and Training Authority (Seta( CEO Sidwell
Mofokeng,
Representatives from the Department of Public Service &
Administration,
Distinguished guests,
Members of the media,
Ladies and gentlemen
Today marks yet another historic moment since government introduced and
embraced the concept of Community Development Workers in response to the
President's call. In his State of the Nation Address in 2003, President Mbeki
called for a different kind of civil servant that will serve communities in the
areas where they live.
Allow me to quote the President verbatim: "The government will create a
public service echelon of multi-skilled Community Development Workers who will
maintain direct contact with the people where the masses live. We are
determined to ensure that government goes to the people so that we sharply
improve the quality of the outcomes of public expenditures intended to raise
the standards of living of our people."
Following the President's pronouncement, work began in earnest to realise
the objectives of the CDW Programme. This culminated in the launch of the
programme in Gauteng by Public Service and Administration Minister G
Fraser-Moleketi and Premier M Shilowa in 2005. Since then we have made strides
in ensuring that we meet our commitment of deploying at least one CDW in all
the wards in Gauteng. Today's graduation represents the coming of age of 232
more cadet CDWs, that are ready for deployment as foot soldiers in our
government's quest to push back the frontiers of poverty and to translate the
slogan "A better life for all" into a tangible reality. You and those of your
peers who graduated last July after a rigorous learnership programme through
the University of South Africa (Unisa) are indeed a welcome addition to the
public service. While you are employed in terms of the public service
regulations, your work is far different from that of other public servants. For
starters you will be deployed in wards and in communities in which you live and
in conditions far removed from the luxury of posh and air-conditioned offices
like other civil servants.
Yours is to link communities to the services that government provides and
thereby ensure that government services and programmes reach the target
communities. This will also necessitate that you should be able to articulate
the lived experiences of the communities to government in order to ensure that
government's policies have the desired outcomes. To achieve the latter you have
to be prepared to work under different weather conditions - rain or sunshine,
snowy cold or scotching hot sun.
Programme Director,
It is prudent to reiterate, what the CDW already know with respect to their
role.
The first is that a CDW is not an elected public representative and can for
that reason alone not purport to have a constituency or assume the role of
public representative. In any given ward, there is only one legitimate public
representative, and that is the ward councillor. There cannot and should not be
any confusion in this regard. You are civil servants and you are there to
complement and augment the work of the councillors, not to compete with
councillors. As CDWs, you are accountable to councillors and cannot call public
meetings.
You are civil servants working in communities and must ensure that there's
development in the areas you have been deployed.
In other words a CDW is a resource to the community, working with and
through the Ward councillor and ward committee to advance the development of
the community. As CDWs, you are accountable to councillors and cannot call
public meetings willy-nilly because you are encroaching in the territory of
elected leaders.
Also you are not supposed to be politically-biased when dealing with
community issues. Some of you are affiliated to certain political parties,
however the important thing is to make sure that South Africans who have not
benefited from the democracy and have no access to government information and
services despite the difference in religion, political affiliation, race or
gender. Yours is to serve the people of the country with pride and dignity.
Operationally, the CDWs are located in all the fourteen municipalities in
the province. The location is deliberate as they are expected to work closely
with all stakeholders across local government. These stakeholders include
mayors, councillors, ward committees and other officials employed by local
government. The municipalities are tasked with assisting and providing support
and supervision of the CDW activities.
Programme Director,
I know that many of the CDWs are doing and continue to do incredible work in
communities and it is important that we recognise and acknowledge that. Some
people today have got a smile on their faces because of the contribution of the
CDWs.
I always say to CDWs on all occasion when I address them that at the end of
each day they must be able to say "I have made a difference � Communities are
happy because of my assistance."
The work you are doing is bearing fruit and you should be commended for
that. I know of a CDW who assisted an 80 year-old man to access an identity
document and another who assisted a 108 year-blind granny and her 85 year-old
daughter to obtain, for the first time in their lives ownership of proper
houses. A place they can finally and proudly call home.
Our civil service is not geared to assist and provide service to communities
in the comfort of their homes. Providing a service to communities at a time and
place convenient to the community is one of the key success factors of the CDW
programme. The CDWs will ultimately be judged by the extent to which they
enhanced access to services by the community.
Some parts of the province have in the past few months experienced
escalations in so called service delivery demonstrations. Critical to the role
of the CDW is to pick up simmering discontent and to bring this to the
attention of the relevant authorities for action and resolution before they
degenerate into sometimes distractive actions accompanied by damage to public
infrastructure.
More critical in this regard are the systems that we need to fine tune to
ensure that individual CDWs are supported in the work that they do. This may
include the manner in which CDW are supervised, assisted to access relevant
decision makers, assisted to escalate issues that require urgent action and the
general co-operation that they require from sector departments both
provincially and nationally.
The conduct and dress code of CDWs is important and I would like to urge you
to dress presentably and behave in an appropriate manner. You must bear in mind
that your are civil servants.
Therefore, as CDWs your mandate is to:
* assist in the removal of development and service delivery bottlenecks and
traffic jams
* strengthen democratic social contract between government and the
communities
* link the communities in which they work with government services and relay
community concerns and problems back to government structures
* support, nurture and advocate for an organised voice for the poor
* improve government-community networks.
Programme Director,
Let me take this opportunity to also indicate that my department will
commission a study to look into the efficacy of the implementation of the CDW
programme in Gauteng. This is intended to yield findings that will assist us to
further improve on the work of the CDWs to ensure maximum impact in communities
that we serve.
I wish all the graduates the best in all their endeavours in making a
difference in their respective communities. It is important that the
certificates being handed here today should be used to open a world of
possibilities that exist in the public service.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Local Government, Gauteng Provincial
Government
3 July 2007
