Premier slams municipalities for hiring unqualified staff

By Maanda Mulaudzi

There is no one imposes staff on municipalities, municipalities have unlimited freedom to hire staff in accordance with skills demands of such municipalities. However, instead of doing so this, unqualified people are being hired simply to satisfy the dictates of friendship. Premier ChupuStanley Mathabatha said this on the occasion of the Limpopo Provincial Local Government Summit which was held at Bolivia Lodge on 07 December 2014.

He said that it could not be justified if municipalities go around hiring nurses to perform a function of Supply Chain Practitioners. And that it could never be justifiable for the municipalities for failing to account on how public resources have been spent. At times these failures appear deliberate. “I can never understand the working and thinking of a municipality that fails to deliver its books for audit by the Auditor General’. Premier Mathabatha told municipalities.

“Limpopo Provincial Administration cannot afford to lose conditional grants such as the Municipal Infrastructure Grant to other provinces on yearly basis, while the province remains with such a huge infrastructure backlog”.

“It is simply absurd that municipalities return monies to build roads to the national treasury while local communities are toyi-toyi for roads”.

Concerning poor infrastructure projects delivered on behalf of municipalities by various service providers, Premier Mathabatha told municipalities that in most cases, the quality of roads they built, and other infrastructure such as the water do not speak to the huge quantum of resources they spent on such projects.”We simply cannot afford to build road in the same places because the roads delivered cannot stand a few millimetres of rain fall. Our management measures must ensure that we get quality value for money. Said Premier Mathabatha.

He reminded municipalities that part of what they should do as local government development projects should be to ensure that their projects were people cantered. People should be the ones who determine what development project they want in their area, not politicians and technocrats.

He said that municipalities could actually minimize the number of service delivery protests if communities accept municipal IDP as a product of their own participation.