Mr Fix-it is staying

Mr Theo van Vuuren, or Mr Fix-it as he had been dubbed, is now the municipal manager for Emalahleni Local Municipality. This was announced during the council meeting held on Thursday, October 29. Van Vuuren who has been in front of the barrage for the past 31 months because of service delivery issues, will hold office for the next two years.

He will oversee the administration, staff and finance sphere of the municipality as he had been given full authority to do so within the framework of the Municipal Finance Management Act and also the Systems Act. The roles and functions of a municipal manager are embedded in the legislation. These functions are executed within a set of delegations and policies as directed by the municipal council.

When Van Vuuren was appointed as administrator in 2013 to steer the sinking municipality to calmer waters, he was immediate tasked to come up with a recovery plan aimed at securing the municipality’s ability to meet its obligations to provide basic services including its financial commitments.
He adopted a short-, medium- and long term strategy, which 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.

“Further refinements have been done, some areas progress provided a base for expansion and that this framework is no longer determined only by the administration as was the case when the municipality was under section 139 intervention, and also are now fully discussed and guided by the Executive Mayor and Council,” Van Vuuren said.

He added that in many areas such as water quality, responses to emergencies, reliability of services, stability of staffing, financial management etc, good progress has been made but, there is still a long way to go and there are many setbacks as the public will attest to.
The Eskom debt is still the migraine the municipality has to deal with.

“It will remain a main issue and also holding us back to more rapidly roll out development and service delivery. We are aiming in the first instance to balance electricity expenditure with income. The main focus here in the short term is to address illegal connections, billing, payment rates, arrear payments and correction of meters,” Van Vuuren said.

He said there is a complete revenue enhancement strategy with comprehensive and multi facetted plans in place and although progress is slow, it is making progress and has allowed the municipality for the first time in years to keep up to date with their main Eskom account payments.

“It will still remain a problem for the foreseeable future but there is ‘light’ at the end of the tunnel,” he commented.

As for the call-centre, it is not up and going yet.

“All systems have been designed and are at this stage being delayed as we need to make structural changes to the building to accommodate a fully fledged customer and call centre. Plans for this have been approved and the tender process to appoint the contractor nearly finalised. This call centre should become a reality within this financial year and I am looking forward to that as it will create a much more effective customer relations and communication experience,” Van Vuuren said.