MPUMALANGA PROVINCE 5 YEAR LOCAL GOVT STRATEGIC AGENDA

OVERALL PROGRESS

• The five year strategic Local Govt agenda is being embraced by Departments.

• We continue to receive support from the Premiers Office, Provincial Management Committee and the Clusters.

• The major challenge remains the redirection of resources to serve the five year SLG agenda as well as high level sector Departments support.

• There is a need to have a dedicated unit to co-monitor sector Departments involvement.

• Currently we have people that are doubling up to co-monitor sector Departments.

• Project Consolidate remains our strategy of pulling everybody together and ensuring that the sector Departments support municipalities.

• The inputs reflected in the submission are still being refined and discussions are ongoing. We will finish this exercise in the next ten days

CROSS CUTTING INTERVENTIONS

• Though our fifteen Municipalities are registered for Project Consolidate we concede that all the Municipalities require support and deployments beyond the fourteen experts. • Our Municipal intervention, especially with regard to financial governance and infrastructure development require special interventions to deal with planning and financial compliance.

KPA 1: MUNICIPAL TRANSFORMATION AND ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT • Appointments of Municipal Managers are on stream and processes to assist the two Municipal Managers to sign their agreements are ongoing.

• Processes to advertise for section 57 managers are ongoing.

• Challenges are observed where processes take too long to finalize because of perceived political interference. Municipal intervention unit is addressing this.

• Processes to improve the state of IDP’s is continuing and sector Departments have been requested to address different Municipalities to log their projects into IDP’s of Municipalities.

KPA 2: BASIC SERVICE DELIVERY

• Water for all flagship is aiming at ensuring that 171,586 households have access to water. This is a joint venture of all our Districts, Province and DWAF.

• Basic Electricity plan to reach the 2012 target is on stream. DME is interacting with our Energy Forum to ensure that the 2% growth is realizable for 07/08.

• The sanitation challenge for schools and clinics is being addressed by the Districts. We are proposing a study to assess the number of pit latrines in the province. This will enable us to manage the backlog alongside the eradication of informal settlements.

• Integrated Human settlements are planned for 9 areas and 7 of these areas have large informal settlements. The plan is to develop total settlements that will address simultaneously informal settlements.

KPA 3: LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

• Our three Districts have adopted their district wide LED strategies.

• The five flagships have got economic spin offs for all the districts (water for all, Moloto Corridor, Maputo Corridor, Capacity Building of the Provincial State Machinery and Heritage, Tourism and Greening of the environment.

• The challenge remains the establishment of dedicated LED personnel in the District.

KPA 4: MUNCIPAL FINANCIAL VIABILITY AND MANAGEMENT

• DLG & H with the Department of Finance have signed an MOU to streamline and co-manage support to Municipalities. This MOU clarifies roles and responsibilities on financial management for both Treasury and Local Government.

• Dedicated support from DLG & H is providing support to the 2010 municipality.

• The roll out of the property rates tax remains a challenge for the province and support is being provided by DLG & H in establishing the valuation appeal boards for the Districts.

KPA 5: GOOD GOVERNANCE AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

• Ward committees continue to serve community participation fora. Our planning for 07/08 is to make ward committees more functional with the speakers office being central in all matters of public participation.

• The support of CDW’s is vital and the need to supervise them intently is apparent. More Departments require their services and we are engaged in the process of drafting service level agreements and supervision arrangements of the CDW’s.

CONCLUSION

• As we re-organize the department, we will have built into the organogram dedicated monitoring and evaluation units for both Local Govt and Housing. • We continue to use the Office of the Premier to assist with Monitoring sector Department support to monitor municipalities.