Johannesburg - Limited capacity, high staff turnover, rising consumer debt, training that’s probably of little value and done only to comply with the law are some of the problems plaguing municipalities – although they are improving.
That’s the Gauteng Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs’s verdict on the province’s municipalities.
The lengthy report on Gauteng municipalities for 2013/14 was signed by Human Settlements, Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Jacob Mamabolo in September, but gazetted only last week.
“The coverage of access to basic service delivery is increasing in the province, with service provision in both formal and informal areas,” the report says.
All municipalities provide some level of free basic water, electricity, sanitation and refuse removal, although this differs from municipality to municipality.
Service delivery is affected by a shortage of staff, delays in appointing service providers and poor quality control in infrastructure projects.
Turnover and staff shortages improved but remained a problem: Joburg had about 6 000 vacancies (about 16 percent) but that was due to restructuring, while Tshwane had 10 000 (about 40 percent).
Staff training is being done, but the report raised concerns over the value.
“Municipalities continued to spend on training and skills development. However, the question that needs to be answered is whether that makes any impact in relation to the amount of money spent on training every financial year,” the report says.
“It is also a question of whether the training provided is geared towards the enhancement of scarce and criti- cal skills necessary for the improvement of service delivery, or whether the training takes place for malicious compliance.”
The management of municipal revenue and consumer debt again emerged as a key challenge.
“The level of municipal debt is growing on a monthly basis from all the categories, namely organs of state, business and consumers,” the report states.
Reasons for this included unemployment, billing problems and illegal connections.
Gauteng municipalities collected R83.9 billion in revenue, which was about 96 percent of their total operating budgets.
The total outstanding consumer debt in March 2013 was R36.2bn, about 2 percent more than the previous year.
The report raises concern over the growing use of conditional grants for operational expenses – contrary to the grant conditions – which puts those municipalities at risk of losing the grants.
Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges, at 25.4 percent in Gauteng during the reporting period and currently 23.7 percent.
Local economic development was hampered by a lack of reliable research and statistics: some municipalities were unable to quantify the contribution their local economies made in combating unemployment.
While the provincial government reported 45 164 jobs created through the expanded public works programme, the municipalities logged this as 61 821 jobs.
Property valuations caused problems.
“The department has been inundated with numerous requests for applications for condonement to submit objections on the property valuations derived by their local authorities, most especially those from the City of Johannesburg metropolitan municipality,” the report says.
The department is considering assessing the quality of the general valuation roll to eliminate such problems.
The Star