SoPlett! | Plettenberg Bay

TWO Garden Route municipalities, Bitou and Mossel Bay, have been named among the top 10 service delivering local authorities in the country.

According to the Empowerdex Service Delivery Index (Munidex), Mossel Bay scored 88,24%, placing it sixth, while Bitou took 10th place with 83,38%.

Bitou was also ranked third in the country for providing waste removal to 95,3% of households.
No Western Cape municipalities were named among the worst performing municipalities.

Services monitored in the survey of the country’s 231 local municipalities, 46 district municipalities and six metropolitan municipalities included housing, water, sanitation, electricity and waste removal.

The scores were based on the proportion of households that had access to a particular service.

Scores were adjusted to compensate for rapid urbanisation, which places additional strain on municipalities to deliver basic services.

Bitou administration manager Thomas Nqolo said yesterday that the town had always been among the top municipalities in similar surveys.

“We have a very experienced corps of officials and our staff turnover is not high, which means we retain expertise.

“We have good council leadership and we go the extra mile in consulting our community,” he said.
Nqolo said the town’s integrated development plan was sound and took the needs of the community into account, while staff were hardworking and dedicated.

Mossel Bay municipal manager Michele Gratz was delighted with the town’s ranking and said it would strive to improve it.

“Apart from having dedicated councillors and staff, it is our policy to concentrate on basic service delivery and, in this regard, continuously upgrade and maintain our infrastructure,” Gratz said.

The town said it also had a good culture of payment for services, sound financial management and zero tolerance for fraud and corruption, which had contributed to the good rating.

The Eden District Municipality was rated third in the country for its overall delivery of the five essential services, scoring 72,2%.

Spokesman Kelvin Vollenhoven said the district was “very pleased” with its rating. “While it is difficult to maintain high levels of service delivery against the declining income of municipalities, the recipe for our success has been that we actively pursue relationships with other spheres of government, provincial and national, which has translated in sound financial support from these sources.”

Vollenhoven said Eden also pursued sound relations with its surrounding municipalities and had recently established a shared services module to promote service delivery.

He said in the district management areas of Uniondale and Haarlem, Eden had experienced some difficulties, since up to 30% of the population was reliant on indigent relief, up to 25% were illiterate and there was high unemployment paired with low levels of economic activity.

“This has translated into a low revenue base with which as a municipality we are unable to expand service delivery.

“Another big constraint has been the high unit cost of delivering services in rural areas, as opposed to the unit cost of service delivery in the urban areas,” he said.
Empowerdex said that in a year when the country had been dogged by service delivery protests, it was critical that actual service delivery levels be assessed.

“An understanding of the weaknesses in local and provincial structures comes with many benefits. It provides insight into whether these protests reflect genuine community concerns or manipulation of information by community and political leaders for any particular reason,” the group said.

The national average score for service delivery across the five key indicators was 59,77%.

The City of Cape Town, which scored 89,5%, was found to deliver the best service of all the metros in the country, while the Western Cape took second place in terms of provincial service delivery at 82,6%.

Cape Town city manager Achmat Ebrahim said the award acknowledged the hard work of metro staff and “should motivate us to work even harder and use our available resources as wisely, responsibly and cost-effectively as possible”.

He said the award gave the city confidence in its 2010 Fifa World Cup preparations.

“Cape Town’s rating shows what can be done when a local council demonstrates a strong commitment to doing its job efficiently and effectively, and to maintaining sound communication links with our citizens.”

Source: Weekend Post