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ALL SENIOR VACANCIES IN THE MUNICIPALITIES SHOULD BE FILLED BY 1ST MAY 2018

All senior vacancies.

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ALL senior vacancies in the municipalities should be filled by 1st May, says MEC of cooperative governance, human settlement and traditional affairs Bentley Vaas.

Vaas was speaking today during a media briefing session where he outlined some of the challenges he encountered.

He said municipalities needed to ensure that they were running their institutions correctly.

Vaas said the directive was communicated to all local government leaders during his road show.

“We are clear on that we want all the vacancies to be filled so that service delivery should be rendered to our people.

“All mayors and municipal managers must ensure that this directive from my office is implemented,” he said.

Vaas said they want the political and administrative leaderships of municipalities to take responsibility of their institutions.

“Look directives are clear, we are firm on that one that by 1 May all vacancies need to be filled as a matter of urgency,” he said.

Vaas said he has instructed all the municipalities to up their socks and find alternative ways of generating a revenue.

He said it could not be business as usual while the municipalities were financially embattled abd unable to render services.

Vaas urged mayors and councillors to constantly seek other avenues such as business opportunities through their local economic developments units to attract investors.

Head of department Bafedile Lenkoe said the was a steering committee in place which was dealing with matters of eskom and water debt.

Lenkoe said on a monthly basis they were receiving a report on the progress made to ensure they avert any power or water cuts were possible.

He said they had engaged with Eskom to assist the municipalities to in coming up with a lasting plan on how to settle the debt.

“What we have realised is that the municipalities are downplaying their agreement, we asking them to honour their payment and pay for services.

“On the other hand is important to also ask our communities to pay for services that they are getting from the municipalities.

“The authorities need to go out to the community and get the money, this can be done through engagements and reporting back,” he said.

Lenkoe said they would be establishing audit action plans to tackle the poor audit outcomes in the municipalities across the province.

He said it was important that committees in municipalities start doing their job because they were unable to bail them out anymore.

“We do not want to say that municipalities are grant dependent but what we want to see is the grant being given to them being used for other things.