The Executive Mayor was engaging with local businesses as to an amount of roughly R1 million to R1,5 million needed to create such a centre. To date seemingly nothing has materialised. If Emfuleni Council can write-off R872 million for “irregular expenditure”, how difficult is it to find roughly R1,5 million? With the advent of Covid-19 and the implementation of various different levels of lockdown, the sanitizing of Emfuleni staff workplaces, increased risk exposure of residents within the Covid-19 prone CBD of Vanderbijlpark, not knowing whether the municipality is open or not, an effective e-government would have made life a lot easier for both residents and businesses in their mutual engagement with the municipality. Monthly payments to Emfuleni from the comfort of your home or business, application of various permits needed to possibly operate within harsher levels of Covid-19, effective “Questions & Answers” to Emfuleni staff working from home and more clarity as to service delivery schedules of waste collection etc.

For Emfuleni Local Municipality a point of departure in terms of their compliance as per the “Public Administration Management Act No. 11 of 2014”. Chapter 2 (Basic Values and Principles), Section 4 highlights:

• (b) Promote efficient, economic and effective use of resources;

• (f) Be accountable to the public;

• (g) Foster transparency by providing the public with timely, accessible and accurate information.

The advantages are for all three stakeholders: residents, businesses and local government. E-government will assist the municipality because it provides real-time information concerning fundamental aspects of a functioning government to residents and businesses and it will assist in redesigning the operational organogram of Emfuleni. From employee costs of just under R1 billion in 2016/2017 to R1,2 billion in 2020/2021 e-government will assist in reducing the numbers of employees required for such a governance and thereby reduce the wage bill to the municipality. It will also make senior managers more accountable to the public and could do away with costly annual tariff increases that currently show no value for services delivered.