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The Gauteng Municipalities Research Committee has identified 12 areas in which the province’s department for cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) should focus on improving municipalities.
This was revealed by Cogta MEC Lebogang Maile, who released the report on Tuesday.
Maile appointed an Investigation Committee led by Professor Trevor Fowler to conduct an investigation on the state of affairs in Gauteng’s 11 municipalities based on strong financial governance, institutional capacity and effective service delivery in September 2019.
Among other recommendations, the committee suggested that each region have a centralized vision.
“We need to have a dedicated vision for each region because each region is unique. The one-size-fits-all approach must be eliminated, ”Maile said.
Among some areas of concern, the committee noted the lack of leadership as one of the main problems in the municipalities of the province.
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“There are municipalities that are doing well because of leadership, but for most of our municipalities that are not doing well, the leadership deficit is the cause of our problems,” Maile said.
Municipalities in the province also faced challenges with local government development versus compliance, where lack of compliance opened the doors to corruption.
“There is a municipality where every Friday they steal the electrical cables or cut them so that there can be an emergency purchase. The community wants electricity. When you do emergency acquisitions, you don’t follow processes and that’s where corruption issues come in. There must be development but also compliance with the constitution, ”Maile said.
Transparent, fair and competitive procurement with good value for money was also one of the issues raised in the province, where ethics was the biggest issue.
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“Here we are talking about ethics and also about many problems encountered in the procurement and bidding processes in the municipalities. The implementation of the open tender system in all municipalities should help address this problem. We want to implement this. It will help with corruption and irregular spending, among other problems, ”Maile said.
Accountability and oversight were found to be lacking in many municipalities, where some municipalities were found to have failed to submit certain reports.
“The commission of inquiry was an exercise to solicit an alternative vision on how to solve our many challenges about local government,” the MEC said.
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