By Mandla Khoza
Mbombela - Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza says while considerable progress has been made in service delivery, the provincial government will spare no effort to reach more people to improve the quality of life for all.
“With services like water, electricity and others, we are standing at 80% [delivery] and we know more still needs to be done.
“When it comes to roads and potholes, I can say 95% of the province’s roads are good. Only 5% are in a very bad state and we are working towards eliminating that.
“In helping municipalities with their roads, we have also deviated money to help them maintain the roads, as they have no financial capacity in some cases,” said the premier during the SABC/The New Age business briefing on Thursday.
The premier said the province had also turned the corner in education. He said the provincial government was making progress in terms of increasing employment by aligning learners with the needs of the job market.
“In education, we are doing well. We have increased our results over the past years... To make our youth employable, we have signed a MoU with the private sector … to help government to align the youth’s skills to what is needed in the job market. That is why we have started building a maths and science centre in the Gert Sibande region,” said Premier Mabuza.
With regards to municipalities that were not performing well when it comes to the Auditor General’s reports, the premier said: “Most of the province’s municipalities are in deep rural areas, where people don't pay for services. Due to that, municipalities rely only on grants and that makes them not perform well, as some money works for unintended things to save the situation (sic).
"Another issue is that well qualified municipal managers are hard to find when it comes to deep rural municipalities, which is a sign of skills shortages.” – SAnews.gov.za
