Minister Zweli Mkhize meets with Black Professionals in Boksburg, 20 Apr

The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Dr Zweli Mkhize, will on Friday 20 April 2018, meet with black professionals to discuss support to distressed and dysfunctional municipalities.

The Minister will meet with black engineers, chartered accountants, auditors, lawyers, corporate governance experts and other professionals to discuss support to the municipalities, ahead of the CoGTA Budget Vote in parliament next month.

Minister Mkhize recently announced the following state of municipalities;

  • Seven percent of the country’s municipalities are classified as well-functioning
  • About 31% of the municipalities are reasonably functional
  • Thirty one percent are almost dysfunctional
  • The remaining 31% is dysfunctional.

The Minister also stated that there are 226 municipalities in the country that are receiving the Municipal Infrastructure Grant funds, aimed at providing grant funding to municipalities to implement infrastructure that would allow them to provide at least a basic level of service to poor households.

Over the MTEF period, national government has made an allocation of R47.6 billion and R16 billion is allocated for 2017/18 financial year. In the past five years, since 2012/13, a total of R3.4 billion in MIG transfers was stopped and was reallocated from underspending municipalities to better spending municipalities.

In the same period, municipalities failed to spend a total of R8.2 billion. Between 2013/14 and  in the current financial year, 2017/18, a total of 55 municipalities had their annual MIG allocations stopped at least twice.

An analysis conducted revealed that these municipalities have various inherent constraints that impede spending. Based on their poor performance, these municipalities can be regarded as distressed or dysfunctional. They are therefore unable to provide the necessary services to people in the required efficient, professional and caring manner.

Minister Mkhize is looking at the urgent deployment of technical capacity experts, in the form of District Technical Support Teams, who will provide support to municipalities towards improving service delivery. The focus of the teams will be to provide infrastructure planning, delivery, operation and maintenance as well as infrastructure management, financial management as well as governance and administration issues.

Beyond technical capacity for infrastructure, is the ongoing programme of promoting more efficient municipalities, the Back to Basics Programme, which CoGTA is implementing.

“The assistance of black professionals such as engineers, accountants, auditors and other professionals will definitely go a long way to assist us in turning around distressed and dysfunctional municipalities in our country. We need their expertise and ideas, as we strive to turn around the distressed municipalities so that they can deliver services to the people better,” said Minister Mkhize.

Members of the media are invited to cover the conference as follows:

Date: 20 April 2018
Time: 9h00
Venue: Birchwood Hotel, Boksburg

For confirmations, kindly contact:
Abigail Taukobong:
Cell: 076 4298 587
Tel: 012 336 5756
E-mail: Abigailt@cogta.gov.za

Nomfundo Xuza
Cell: 081 039 3537
Tel: 012 334 0512
E-mail: NomfundoX@cogta.gov.za

Enquiries:
Legadima Leso
Cell: 083 378 9495

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