Critical Thinking Seminar sets tone to plan for the new term of administration

By: Emmaculate Cindi

Ahead of the new term of administration after 08 May general election, which will see the sixth administration take over, the Office of the Premier (OTP) held a Critical Thinking Seminar yesterday which was held at the Ranch Hotel outside the capital city of Limpopo.

The seminar was attended by communication official representatives from both provincial departments and municipalities including political analyst Somadoda Fikeni and former Government Senior Official Mr Joel Netshitenzhe amongst others.

Outlining the objective of the seminar, Director General in the Office of The Premier Mr Nape Nchabeleng gave a brief background of the extremely hostile environment that the 2014 administration had to work under due to the inheritance of section 100. The section saw the provincial government placed under administration by the Cabinet in 2011 and ultimately took the 2014 administration about more than few months to recover instead of focusing on the mandate of the province.

Since the recovery from section 100, the province focused on implementing the Limpopo Development Plan (LDP) with the focus of developing and improving communication strategy, to communicate adequately and effectively with various stakeholders including Limpopo citizen about implementation of the LDP.

“This kind of seminar is held to reflect broadly whether government as a whole communicate enough, particularly to assist the Limpopo government to improve with communicating with stakeholders when implementing its programmes, recommendations from this gathering will be used to assist the next administration to develop the five year communication strategy” said Nchabeleng

Taking to the podium, Mr Netshitenzhe who has spent many years working under planning in the presidency office gave an update on the vision 2030 National Development Plan (NDP) status which includes reducing unemployment by 6% , to allow South Africans to enjoy minimum standard of living life and minimum wage.

One of the recommendation which is set to be implemented by the new administration is the appointment of Accounting Officers in government.

The Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) will champion the appointment with set requirements and process which will include more than four candidates that will be forwarded to the executive to approve appointment rather than the appointment being handled by political deployment as it used to be in the past.

The appointment of accounting officers by DPSA requirements will ensure that there’s continuity even when the new administration takes over and possibly will route out loyalty appointment which in most cases paralyses institutions with power relations between professional appointees and political appointees.

Better coordination between three spheres of government is said to be the most important and critical aspect of ensuring that the next administration functions better. Moreover that the ethical leadership and professional becomes core in their line of business.

It is no secret that social media has changed the traditional way of reporting and consuming news, it has become our first point of entry with engagement and keeping abreast with what is happening around the world.

Office of the Premier was congratulated by Ms Rose Mantsho who made a presentation on New Media Trends and was impressed by how OTP is using social media to update its followers and encouraged municipalities and other departments to use the same model OTP is using to market their products.