Durban — In an effort to improve service delivery and financial administration of local municipalities, KwaZulu-Natal Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube held met all the municipalities that received unfavourable outcomes from the office of the auditor-general.
At the meeting held at the Archie Gumede Conference Centre, Public Works Department, in Mayville on Tuesday Dube-Ncube said it was expected that ministerial representatives implement consequence management resulting from Section 106 investigations within three months of completing those reports.
“And in turn the performance of ministerial representatives will be assessed by the MEC within two months. We want to see the performance agreement of the ministerial representatives, we want to see if these have measures in terms of achievements and time frames.”
She stressed that municipalities should be operating in such a way that all office-bearers understand that they were all employed to actually work and deliver services.
“We are not here to do as we please. Similarly, we have experienced a problem in accessing municipal premises in other municipalities by the ministerial representatives, we saw this at Inkosi Langalibalele Local Municipality where this was done by the municipality’s leadership. Maybe we are taking the wrong approach in this regard, where it would appear that we seem to beg to engage and work with these municipalities. This was apparent at one of these municipalities where it was said that as a government we should seek to start and inform the municipality when we want to do things.”
Dube-Ncube said just because someone was the mayor of a municipality did not mean they were the “king” of that municipality.
“This is not how it works, when it comes to municipalities there should be an understanding that we are appointed to serve the people. When it comes to those municipalities that are troubled we need to ensure that forensics are done, we really need to go in full force to ensure we enforce the country’s laws.”
She said the government would continue through the Department of Co-operative Governance and the provincial Treasury to provide the necessary support in accordance with its provincial mandate to ensure that the government’s inspirations are met.
“This will be while interventions will follow a standard approach, we will not do things without working with you but where there is resistance I assure you we will make sure we give the full might of the law.”
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