‘Two levels of government will suffice’
Municipalities lack the capacity for service delivery.
DEAR Editor,-
Municipalities, as part of local government, play a pivotal role in servicing the people directly. The idea of ‘wall-to-wall municipalities’ was a good one to address development issues, but now municipalities face many structural challenges.
There are three levels of government in South Africa, namely national, provincial and local. Now let me refer to certain issues of service delivery in the Ugu district, which has a major problem delivering water efficiently. Ugu lacks resources in terms of capital, skilled labour, dams and state-of-the-art purifying facilities and if one looks at the Durban Metro, there are less problems with water delivery to citizens.
Another issue is delivery of houses and the Hibiscus Coast Municipality delivers houses at a snail’s pace, actually taking years in the Mkholombe, Latshoda and Louisiana areas. Recently it seems that something might be happening in Masinenge near Margate and HCM has delivered houses in some rural areas.
Then there is the Ezinqoleni Municipality that has no revenue base and is on the brink of collapse. Durban Metro is able to overcome all these challenges, not only because of its solid revenue base, but mostly because it works directly with national government.
Our constitution enables metros to get whatever assistance is required directly from national government, hence the housing funding received by Durban Metro, which shortcuts the process implemented at Ugu, as well as the six other municipalities which fall under this district. In other words HCM applies to provincial government for funding to build houses, which then approaches national government which causes delays. The same process is applied in reverse when responding.
There are houses that HCM needs to transfer to owners, outstanding from a programme started in 2008, because it relies on assistance from provincial government, which is delayed in terms of funding.
This proves that all these challenges could be sorted out and service could be delivered speedily and efficiently if there were only two levels of government to deal with.
DUMILE XOLO
Gamalakhe Township
