Local government warns unqualified staff cannot be fired

Richard Baloyi. (Image: GCIS)

These developments follow auditor-general Terence Nombembe's estimate that 70% of municipal officials were not qualified to perform their duties.

Yesterday's Cabinet statement said: "Cabinet expressed grave concern on the poor quality of the audit results as reported by the auditor-general.

"Cabinet directed ... Richard Baloyi to ensure that municipalities employ qualified chief financial officers at all levels in compliance with the municipal minimum competency requirements. Furthermore, Cabinet expressed appreciation for the additional six municipalities in the clean audit category for the year under review and the previous serving municipalities that maintained a clean audit. Cabinet commends the 13 municipalities that have received clean audits and calls on them to continue to sustain their good performance."

Even those who are useless cannot be fired

However, in a separate development, South African Local Government Association (Salga) CEO Xolile George told a news conference in Parliament, in response to a question about replacing the 70% incompetent municipal financial managers and managers, that there were contractual obligations for the municipalities.

While employees on fixed-term contracts could be worked out of the system, those on permanent contracts would have to be trained to do their jobs.

"Our appetite is not to fire people but to capacitate them," he said, indicating that attempts would be made to retrain municipal managers and financial managers who were under qualified.

National Council of Provinces (NCOP) chairman Mninwa Mahlangu said there was "a need to examine the impact national legislation was having on improving or constraining delivery by municipalities". He said this emerged at this week's first Local Government Week, a gathering of local government officials hosted by the NCOP to look at the problems and challenges that led to the poor performance of most municipalities. The intention is to make it an annual event.

And yet another task team

"It seems that some of the laws and regulations do not take into account the differentiated nature of municipalities, hence the argument that we cannot have 'one size fits all'," Mahlangu said.

Baloyi has established a task team to look at conflicts among the laws relating to local government, and 300 sections of some statutes had been found to need amendment.

George said planning laws and environmental laws had been found to be problematic, as was the fact that the national government's financial year ran from April to March, while that of local government ran from July to June. There was a need to align the financial years, he said.

Salga chairman Thabo Manyoni agreed, saying some laws were in conflict with each other, making it difficult for municipalities to function effectively.

Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge