MEC Skhosana discusses slow Municipal Intrastructure Grant (MIG) spending
08 May 2013
The MEC for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Mr Simon Skhosana has met with Executive Mayors, Municipal Managers and Municipal Technical Directors in the province. The special meeting was called to look at the challenges faced by municipalities that affects their Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) spending as well as to come up with remedial actions to address these.
In his address to the meeting MEC Skhosana expressed his dissatisfaction that municipalities were not spending their MIG allocation at the rate that they should be.
“We are now in the fourth quarter of the municipal financial year and some municipalities have not reached 50% of the expenditure from their allocation and many are below 80%. This cannot be correct as we know that our communities are still faced with huge infrastructure backlogs” said Skhosana.
He emphasised that this is a situation that needed to be changed as a matter of urgency.
The total amount that was allocated and transferred to municipalities for MIG in the province for the 2012/2013 financial year was R1.4 billion. As at end of April 2013 an amount of R797 million (56%) of the total amount had been spent. MEC Skhosana expressed concern on the remaining 44% that is still to be spent considering that the financial year end for municipalities is end of June. “This is an indication that we might not be able to spend the remaining amounts given that we are only left with two months before the end of the financial. We need to do an introspection as municipalities and see what is causing us not to deliver on the projects that we have planned for”, said Skhosana.
An analysis conducted by the Department has identified that some of the challenges that have contributed to the under spending of the MIG include lack of technical capacity to develop business plans, poor planning of projects by municipalities and late appointment of service providers due to slow procurement processes in municipalities.
As part of assisting municipalities address these challenges of under spending, the department has conducted working sessions with municipalities that are struggling with MIG expenditure to provide support by developing plans to fast track the implementation of projects and appointment of service providers for planned projects, an appraisal committee has been coordinated to sit on a bi-weekly basis in order to assist municipalities to register their MIG projects for the outer years, as well as monitoring the Project Management Units (PMU) closely and making sure that they are assessed on a quarterly basis.
The meeting agreed that all municipalities will develop acceleration plans and all Technical Managers and Municipal Managers will provide fortnightly progress reports on these, site visits to projects will be conducted and reports analysed to link expenditure and value for money, all PMU’s to spend more time on sites and ensuring that projects are moving and there are no lapses, all municipalities to submit their detailed procurement plans for projects 2013/14 no later than 15 May 2013, all Bids for 2013/14 financial year will be advertised between May and June 2013 and appointments be finalised by July and commence with implementation, and no managers contracts must be extended neither performance bonuses paid if targets are not met or allocations not finalised.
Executive Mayors and Municipal Managers pledged their commitment to ensure that municipalities improve their performance in spending on MIG. The Department will continue to support and work closely with all municipalities to ensure that all projects are implemented timeously to ensure delivery of services.
The meeting also received presentations on progress on the roll out of the Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP), Community Works Programme (CWP) and the redetermination of municipal boundaries in the province.
Contact Person
Simphiwe Kunene
Cell:
082 413 3931
Issued by the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
