Metro works to combat reliance on service providers
The Tshwane metro has formulated plans to deal with its over-reliance on service providers, which it blames for its service delivery backlog.
The Tshwane metro has formulated plans to deal with its over-reliance on service providers, which it blames for its service delivery backlog.
“Council has approved a cost-containment policy that will deal with the over-reliance on service providers,” mayor Stevens Mokgalapa said.
He added the metro was also building in-house capacity to carry work out fleet- and human resources management functions internally, instead of relying on service providers.
Mokgalapa has on several occasions spoken out against the metro’s heavy reliance on external parties for getting work done.
“Any municipality should be able to [do] simple and basic things,” he said most recently.
Mokgalapa said the problem arose when “you tell an official to do a job then a service provider does it for them”.
He added the metro had also over the years “broken itself into pieces”.
“This is because of an over-reliance on service providers.”
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He said there were also too many tenders issued by the metro, even for work which could have been done in-house.
“And that’s the problem. We have a lot of top-up management, but on the ground, we don’t have anything and we over-rely on service providers.”
He said the tenders were the cause of fights between various parties as they were issued for “things that don’t need a tender”.
“I grew up knowing that the municipality has trucks that carry waste, but now waste [management] is outsourced; so we have to build that in-house capacity in the city,” Mokgalapa said.
Since taking up office in 2018, Mokgalapa has often reiterated his main priority was service delivery.
“I have seen a lot of nice pie charts and presentations, so I am no longer interested. I am now interested in what happens on the ground.”
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