Pretoria - The recent ward councillors' summit in the North West has identified strategic intervention methods which will help the Department of Local Government and Traditional Affairs to accelerate and improve service delivery.
The summit resolved that in order to improve access to basic services such as water and basic sanitation, the provincial department would have to work hand in glove with the Department of Water Affairs to develop data collection guidelines.
The department should also develop a strategy to improve inter-governmental relations in the province and forge positive relations between ward councillors and traditional leaders to enable facilitation and implementation of projects at the required speed.
The summit also resolved that in order to improve the state of good governance and administration in municipalities, municipal councils needed to be efficient and responsive to the developmental needs of their communities.
This will also strengthen the functionality of ward committees and mainstream ward based planning as part of the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) process.
In order to create viable municipalities, all relevant stakeholders will develop a support programme for municipalities across four key strategic areas, which include financial viability and management, service delivery and infrastructure, governance and administration, planning and economic development.
Traditional Affairs MEC Paul Sebegoe said the major challenge faced by the province was to restore lost confidence in the system of local government as well as instilling trust and meeting the expectations of the people in government service-offering at large.
Delegates signed an agreement committing them to promote and sustain inter-governmental relations; develop systems and mechanisms for collection and organisation of statistics and data on basic service delivery in consultation with Statistics South Africa.
They also committed that ward committees and community development workers will champion service delivery and will also do ward profiling annually.
Ward based integrated infrastructure planning and development will also be strengthened and the prioritisation process of municipal needs will be reviewed to strengthen the role of ward councillors.
