Pretoria - Cabinet has approved a turnaround strategy aimed at overhauling municipalities that had come under fire for poor service delivery.
Tabled by the Department of Cooperative Governance, the municipal turnaround strategy will aim to involve communities more, a sector which had largely been left out of the decision making.
It is hoped that this will ensure behavioural changes are implemented at the executive level of municipalities and that corruption is stamped out.
"In its deliberation, Cabinet ...approved the proposed action plan with critical milestones to address the local governance challenges with the view to take this sphere of government onto a trajectory of delivery," Cabinet said in a statement.
The strategy is also aimed at explaining in detail how government plans to change the state of local government in a manner that will ensure that local government functions efficiently and effectively in delivering services.
Following Cabinet's approval, the strategy would be presented to the country's close to 300 municipalities from early next year to ensure their budgets and plans respond to its objectives.
Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka, during the ministerial cluster briefings recently, said the national turnaround strategy would be customised to local municipalities throughout January to March next year.
