By Chris Khumalo
KWAZULU-NATAL Local Government MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu yesterday announced a R1.1 billion bail out for weak municipalities to enable them to deliver basic services.
The move comes against the background of an alarming situation where several municipalities are unable to deliver services to people in the province.
A recent "profile" study by the National Provincial and Local Government Department on the state of municipalities in the country, found substantial backlogs in the KwaZulu Natal with only less than 30 percent of 61 municipalities able to provide 60 percent of services to beneficiaries.
It also found that 52.9 percent of households were still without electricity and 53.1 percent still relied on pit latrines and other sub-standard methods of sanitation.
Sixty per cent of schools were found to be without power supply, 51 percent still make use of pit latrines, while 69 percent of clinics in the province have no piped water.
In his budget speech in the legislature, Mr Mabuyakhulu noted that key areas of challenges towards delivering services to people lied with the slow delivery of basic water and electricity by most of the municipalities in the province.
He said in the 2005/2006 financial year an amount of R1.1 billion would be set aside for investment in basic municipal infrastructure.
"The successful utilisation of this grant by our municipalities should result to our people having access to basic services.
"We will get additional resources within and outside government to support municipalities to meet their millennium targets and change the lives of the poor," said Mr Mabuyakhulu.
He noted though that the capacity of some municipalities to fully use these funds were limited, saying that attention was to be paid into enhancing the technical capacity of municipalities.
To deal with the lack of technical capabilities of some municipalities, Mr Mabuyakhulu said government had launched "Project Consolidate."
This project, to be driven by mobile teams of experts in financial and technical management, would be deployed to municipalities that lacked capacity to deal with problems.
"The primary objectives of Project Consolidate is to provide hands-on intervention by both national and provincial governments to strengthening municipal capacity and enhancing service delivery," he said, adding that 46 municipalities in the province had been identified as priority to receive this assistance.
He said the provincial treasury had approved R16.5 million in the current fiscal year and a further R30 million per annum in the next three years to go towards Project Consolidate.
Source: BuaNews
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