By More Matshediso
Pietermaritzburg - Deputy Minister in the Department of Communications, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, has urged municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal to use the various communication platforms available to allow residents to participate more interactively with Government.
“We need the public to advise government on the changes that we can make to improve service delivery using these platforms,” she said.
“We have established community media as government. We need to support it because it is accessible to everyone in our communities. We need to use phone-in programmes in our local radio stations and get a column in the community newspapers,” the Deputy Minister said.
She was addressing the KwaZulu-Natal forum of Municipalities and Members of the Executive Councils (MuniMec), where she outlined the National Communications Strategy Framework and the status of communication in the province.
This particular MuniMec is led by the KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nomusa Dube-Mncube, as part of the ongoing provincial intergovernmental fora established to strengthen the functioning of local government.
Mayors were also given an opportunity to indicate challenges they faced in their municipalities, as well as possible solutions.
Municipalities which performed well in the province were also allowed a platform to illustrate how they satisfactorily delivered services to communities, despite budgetary constraints.
“Seven municipalities in our province received clean audits, two others got a disclaimer and 47 had unqualified audits. We are not far from achieving our goal,” said MEC Dube-Mncube.
There are 10 district municipalities and one metro in the province. - SAnews.gov.za
