SDM’s annual Lekgotla aims to bring services to the people
In his inaugural address in August 2016, Ramaila vowed to eradicate the culture of under-spending, roll-overs, incompetence, fraud and corruption, which the municipality was commonly known for.
APEL – A vision by executive mayor Stan Ramaila to rebrand, remodel and repackage Sekhukhune District Municipality (SDM) is slowly being realised.
It has emerged that contrary to the past 10 years, the district municipality has for the first time reached 98 per cent spending on the Municipal Infrastructure Grant for the financial year 2018-19. This was revealed during the annual mayoral lekgotla held on August 8 at Ga-Nkoana Village.
In his inaugural address in August 2016, Ramaila vowed to eradicate the culture of under-spending, roll-overs, incompetence, fraud and corruption, which the municipality was commonly known for.
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“We are proud that our efforts to install systems that deal with forward planning in terms of procurement, water and sanitation master plans, tightening our grip on incompetence and laziness through visionary leadership, and application of consequence management is yielding positive results. We are still committed in achieving a clean audit that speaks to the actual service delivery on the ground,” said Ramaila.
“The lekgotla also noted with concern the current economic outlook of the district, where we are confronted with slow growth, growing unemployment, and rising prices of food and fuel. And logically, factors such as the effects of investments into VBS bank and the 2018 R5,4 million SDM fraud case, are some of the down-pullers the nation is confronted with.
“While we are proud that Sekhukhune is the only municipality that did not invest in VBS, we are worried about the effects on service delivery as a result of these investments. In our case, the R5,4 million fraud case has turned emotive where people are concerned that we are spending more than we have lost. We have since instructed the accounting officer to expedite the labour and criminal processes without interference,” said Ramaila.
On acceleration of services, the mayor said he was concerned with the slow progress in terms of getting the bulk water schemes in Sekhukhune, like the Nebo Plateau, Nkadimeng Scheme, and the De Hoop Dam, to provide much needed water to communities.
He reiterated that they are working hard to ensure water projects are completed and ready to bring water to the people.
