Local government: ‘Encourage’ communities to pay – Minister

Councillors are being ‘urged’ to devise ways of encouraging communities to pay for their municipal services. This, notes Pam Saxby for Legalbrief Policy Watch, is according to a Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs media statement on a recent meeting between Minister Zweli Mkhize and the leadership of ‘dysfunctional and distressed municipalities’ in the Mangaung metropolitan area. Noting that the culture of non-payment for municipal services ‘continues to drive … (the authorities concerned) deeper into debt’, the Minister said that ‘a new attitude and approach’ will be fundamental to the success of his department’s efforts in assisting municipalities to ‘function as expected’. Interventions already under way include the deployment of technical experts to support municipalities in preparing financial recovery plans that will apparently focus on infrastructure development and maintenance, as Legalbrief Today has already reported.

The Minister’s meeting with Mangaung municipal leaders was arranged as part of a series of visits to ‘priority’ struggling local authorities countrywide. Delivering his budget vote speech in the NCOP last week, the Minister said that their purpose is to identify ‘critical’ challenges requiring tailored ‘ministerial interventions’. In the Mangaung metropolitan area, according to the statement, these are likely to entail developing and implementing ‘clear turn-around plans’, paying outstanding bulk electricity and water accounts, filling all vacant ‘key positions’ with ‘well-qualified’ professionals ‘within three months’, and using municipal infrastructure grants to fund the projects for which they were intended. Mkhize also called on municipal leaders to ‘create an economic base’ to provide ‘much-needed’ developmental revenue.