Not as administrator, but as acting municipal manager of Emalahleni Local Municipality.
On March 31 the chapter on the 23-month intervention was finally closed. That left an air of doubt as no-one knew what the next step for the municipality would be.
After a mayoral committee meeting on Thursday, April 2 it was decided to offer Van Vuuren the position as acting municipal manager.
He earlier this week indicated that he would be staying on.
Van Vuuren will work closely with the municipal political leadership in executing programmes to improve service delivery and financial sustainability.
“The importance now is to work as a team and my role will be more on execution, with the executive decision-making function reverted back to the Executive Mayor, Cllr Salomi Sithole. I am looking forward to this new path ahead of us and am positive that the process of rebuilding our city will gain greater momentum with the political guidance now possible,” he said.
In the 23 months since he first stepped into the shoes of the captain, when he was chosen to lead the sinking ship to calmer waters, Van Vuuren proved that communication is one of the strongest links between municipality and its residents.
He wrote the following message on Facebook:
He succeeded in opening a channel to the residents and the Facebook page is flooded daily with complaints, compliments and suggestions.
Van Vuuren also secured a constructive relationship between management and staff and took care in establishing trust with local labour forums.
Van Vuuren’s short-, medium – and long term plans made headlines on several occasions.
This strategy included stabilising the municipal delivery capacity, executing municipal functions in a way which will build sustainability and building on the long term a strong enabling environment.
One of the first obstacles was service delivery.
The biggest issue in this respect was the uncoordinated and wasteful manner in which service delivery happened, the lack of equipment, abdication of management and disorganised staffing arrangements.
Through attending to the vehicle plant, mobilising sufficient vehicles, reviewing the shift system and instilling a management culture, this situation has improved significantly.
A five pronged service delivery programme was also introduced to address the most burning issues in the community, ranging from cleaning the environment to restoring law and order.
This problem with fleet was also addressed and through a generous sponsorship from Anglo American the municipality now has 20 double cab light duty vehicles, cherry picker, a crane truck and a load lugger.
In respect of financial stability, the municipality has launched a process of revenue enhancement and cleaning up its creditors and debtor’s books.
Progress has been positive, although the process to instil a culture of payment and to re-establish the data base is slow. One of the biggest challenges is the need to verify and install meters to all users.
The R550-million owed to Eskom is still a headache, but one that is getting priority attention.
“To meet the requirements the revenue enhancement process, focusing on outstanding business and government debt, was accelerated and the municipality aims to cover most if not all of this arrears during March. This however remains a critical outstanding issue requiring provincial intervention,” Van Vuuren said.
Since January a revised action plan to address outstanding debt, focusing on outstanding debt from businesses was introduced. As a result, the payment rate went up from a first six month average to 91% during February and indications are that this approach will make inroads on the outstanding debt with a target to reduce it to 50% by the end of the financial year.
A revised and improved audit remedial process was launched since January and internally a dedicated managerial responsibility overseeing a technical audit steering committee is in place. Positive is that the Audit Committee is in place and is playing a much stronger oversight role than before.
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