Municipal Systems Bill: briefing

Meeting report

PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT PORFOLIO COMMITTEE; LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION SELECT COMMITTEE
19 April 2000
MUNICIPAL SYSTEMS BILL: BRIEFING

Documents Handed Out:
Municipal Systems Bill
Memorandum on the Objects of Municipal Systems Bill (attached to end of minutes)

SUMMARY
The committee was briefed on the scope, aims and objectives of the Bill. A new system of Local Government was envisaged, where Local Government would put people first and would develop communities in terms of their priorities. The Bill's more important provisions include those on Public Participation and Performance Management, which were new concepts being introduced in the interests of efficiency and transparency in municipalities. Public participation was discussed at length. Issues around how communities would participate, the advancement of personal mandate-less views of minorities being passed off as general community feelings, the question of consensus, and whether the Municipality would have the final say in the process of public participation were the main issues. Integrated Development Planning (IDP) was also a key element in the Bill.

Concern was expressed around the implementation of the Bill particularly in view of fixed term contracts of CEOs within current municipal structures, being merged with other municipalities in the new demarcation process. The possibility of duplication of functions as well as the danger of legal action based on constructive dismissal could undermine what the Bill was in fact trying to achieve. Despite there being more mandatory provisions in the Bill as opposed to enabling provisions, an incremental, phased-in approach would be followed in terms of implementation.

MINUTES
Ms Jackie Manche, the acting Deputy Director General of the Department of Provincial and Local Government gave the presentation on the Bill. The thrust of the presentation focused on the Memorandum on the Objects of the Bill (see document).

Discussion
An opposition party member said that he was worried about the "stiff hand" the Minister would still have on Local Government. He was against centralisation of powers which he felt was the aim. He wanted to know if it would be possible to diminish the hold which the Minister would have on Local Government.

Ms Manche said that the Minister was given the power to issue guidelines and regulations. In the Bill the bulk of the powers were in fact given to the MEC.

Mr P Smith (IFP) said that according to the Memorandum on the Objects of the Bill (which the presentation largely encompassed), the legislative approach was "broadly enabling". It was mandatory only to the extent that certain fundamental issues required uniformity. He wanted clarity on this since at a glance he had seen "may" being used only once in the Bill whilst "must" was used regularly. He wanted clarity on the extent that the word "may" was used in the Bill.

Ms Manche said that much time was spent on the question of mandatory and enabling provisions. In ending up with the current draft, an important question which the Department had asked itself was what it wanted to achieve with the Bill. A new system of Local Government was envisaged, where Local Government would put people first and Local Government would develop communities in terms of their priorities (in line with the Batho Pele principles). In this context municipalities had to be forced to carry out some "bare minimum functions, otherwise the Bill would not be enforceable. A rigorous pruning exercise was undertaken where things, which were too prescriptive were eliminated. This was particularly true of the chapters on Public Participation, IDPs and Performance Management

Mr Elroy Africa, from the Department, added that the area of enabling and mandatory legislation was a critical issue, which the Department had grappled with. The debate was whether the legislation was biased on the mandatory or on the enabling side. Firstly the Department had very clear reasons for where the Bill was prescriptive. He agreed that the legislation was mandatory in a whole range of areas. It had adopted this approach because it was in the process of establishing a new sphere of government and it was important for there to be a common foundation which would enable common core minimum systems to characterise Local Government across South Africa.

Secondly in terms of the enabling provisions, on the one hand there were clear instances in the Bill where legal certainty and clarity had to be created. For example with the chapter on Municipal Service Partnerships, if people had looked at the policy document brought out by the Department, they would see that there were a range of areas identified where there was legal uncertainty and people simply wanted legal clarity on the sort of legal framework which existed.

The second reason for going the enabling route was simply to increase and empower managers and municipalities to further embark on courses of action on which they did not have enough "clout" . An example was the whole chapter on credit control. The ability of municipal managers to exercise their power better had to be firmed up.

Mr Smith also wanted to know when it was indeed enabling, why enabling legislation had been written for a sphere of government, which had original powers already. In terms of the "multi jurisdictional service delivery" one did not need enabling legislation for municipalities to do this. They did it already since they had original powers in terms of the Constitution to deliver services and all the ancillary powers, which went with this. He thus asked how the enabling of municipalities to do this would change in respect of a power they already had and in fact were exercising.

Ms Manche said that there was currently no enabling legislation. Municipalities had no regulatory framework on multi-jurisdictional service delivery but there was a need for it thus a regulatory framework was necessary. There could possibly be innovative ideas for service delivery but with the current situation, services to area A had to be provided by Municipality A in Jurisdiction A. There was no framework for partnerships between municipalities. Whilst municipalities had certain powers when it came to setting tariffs, property rating and collection of revenue, no legislation allowed municipalities to enter into these types of partnership arrangements.

Mr Africa said that it should not be forgotten that the Bill came directly out of the White Paper on Local Government. The Department had not sucked it out of their thumbs. Thus the White Paper itself had gone through a very extensive process of identifying the problems at the local sphere in South Africa. What was now being done was the logical progression of identifying these needs and problems already identified. Secondly, the current stage which had been reached on the Bill was itself a result of a very elaborate Public Participation process.

Mr B Solo (ANC) was interested in the question of the delegation of functions to managers. He asked whether those functions included powers.

Mr Sledge Sekele, from the Department, said that the powers and functions of the Municipalities arose from the Council. It was for Council to determine how they would delegate the powers of Municipalities to municipal managers. This was in line with current International practices and trends. In the Bill a number of functions which the Department felt should be performed by municipal managers have been elucidated. In respect of delegation, one also needed to mention that there was a clause that dealt with powers that could not be delegated to a municipal manager. These were largely the powers that related to political and legislative responsibilities of Council.

Mr S Mshudulu (ANC) said that he had gone to one Local Government Office where there was not even one computer. He asked whether there would be uniform accessibility to all resources and stressed that there had to be a needs analysis done with respect to Municipalities. He also asked whether SALGA could make input on these issues.

Ms Manche said that SALGA had been the Department's partner in the drafting of the Bill. The Bill did not make provision for the fact that Municipality A should have a minimum of four computers, for example, but instead it laid down that municipalities would have systems in place to collect revenue. The Municipality itself had to ensure that they actually collected the revenue.

The next member's question related to the mechanism concerned with Public Participation. He said that the Bill stated in various clauses that municipalities "must consult with communities, residents ratepayers" and others. Whilst the intention was to promote Public Participation in municipal affairs, to what extent would this allow single-issue groups of limited representivity within municipalities to hold up processes on the grounds. This Bill prescribed that there had to be participation with communities but "community" was very broadly defined. Did the Department believe this to be a problem, and how would it be addressed?

Ms Manche said that much detail from previous drafts of the Bill had been removed from the chapter on Public Participation. In the Department's opinion it wanted to have a certain bare minimum in the Bill which would force municipalities to participate with (that is, consult with) communities when it determined its priorities, for example when determining who should be a service provider to a Municipality for example. Essentially this ensured that municipalities would be accountable to its residents.

An ANC committee member wanted to know what the chapter on Public Participation's link was with the Act on the Promotion of Access to Information.

Dr Petra Bouwer of the Department said that one should draw a distinction between access to information that could be very specific and mechanisms and processes which enhance transparency. He felt that the chapter on Public Participation's main aim was to enhance transparency.

To this extent, the Bill fitted in with the Access to Information Act because if one looked at clause 19, dealing with a municipal code that stated that certain information should be available to the public, this section was in line with the Access to Information Act but did not exclude the application of the Access to Information Act. Thus the Access to Information Act was complemented. He added that the principle of Access to Information should not be equated to Public Participation which to a large extent was focused on enhancing transparency.

The same member said that in terms of the Bill, Council could only call a closed meeting if there was fourteen days notice. She asked what would happen in the event of an urgent need to meet.

Ms Manche said that this concern regarding the fourteen day period would be noted for purposes of future drafts of the Bill.

In relation to Public Participation, Mr I Ntshangase (ANC) wanted clarity on the consultation that was required and whether or not 100% consensus was needed. Ms G Borman (DP) relating her question to the issue of Public Participation and consensus, said that there were such varying needs in a community, from maintenance to development. She had difficulty with all the bodies that needed to be consulted. Was community representation envisaged generally or would the Council have to approach all the different bodies individually?

Ms Manche answered both questions and said that the Bill did not say that the Municipality had to consult each and every interest group and stakeholder in a community. The Municipality had to put in place processes and mechanisms such as publishing notices for hearings on IDPs for a Municipality in the local newspaper.

The next member said that the Bill did not say whether the Municipality would have the final say in any matter. Municipalities would be faced with groups having different political persuasions. What would happen in this situation? He felt that the Bill should say that the Municipality had the final say.

Ms Manche did anticipate that there would be groups, which had certain interests. At the end of the day the Municipality would have the final say. This was entrenched in the Constitution where it said that the Council had to make decisions concerning the exercise of all the powers and the performance of all the functions of a Municipality. In section four of the Bill on the rights and duties of governing structures, it was stated that the Council of the Municipality had the right to govern on its own initiative, to perform the functions and exercise the powers and to finance the Municipality's affairs. The Bill was very clear that the Council had the final say and it would govern in its area of jurisdiction.

Mr D Olifant (ANC) was concerned with the repossession of Council houses and wanted to know whether a mechanism could not be devised whereby people living in Council houses could rather be given the opportunity to sell the houses and then give the Council what was owed to them. This problem was adding to the squatter situation and needed to be resolved.

Ms Manche said that the Bill required (in the section on credit control and debt collection) the Municipality to have a credit control policy. It was the opinion of the Department that the credit control policy had to have provision for the indigent in the form of extension for payment of accounts. There had to be a mechanism whereby the community could approach municipalities to enter into agreements for the extension of time to pay accounts. See section 89(d) and (e).

Mr E Magashule (ANC) agreed that the Council had to have the final say. However there were instances where the general public held a particular view on an issue. Should Council still have the final say? How would this be determined. The Chair acknowledged that this was a very philosophical question that could not be adequately answered immediately.

Mr Smith said that in terms of certain sections in Chapter 3 of the Bill with regard specifically to certain exclusions, the exclusion of people from public meetings could only be done if there was a by-law or a resolution of the Council to that effect. He felt that this achieved nothing because what would happen was that every Council would at the beginning of a session, quickly pass a resolution that would say that when it needed to exclude people it could do it.

A subsequent clause said that one could not exclude things if it was a matter of public interest. Unless public interest had a legally defined meaning he said that by definition everything that Council dealt with was in the interest of members of the public.

Finally he could not understand why Council meetings could not be closed but meetings of the executive or the mayoral committee could be.

The Chair commented that unless there was funding for public participation, the chapter became "pious words on paper". Secondly he said that the Municipal Structures Bill, which the committee had dealt with already, did not deal with public participation sufficiently.

Mr Sekele replied that if one looked at the earlier drafts of the Bill, it would be seen that the Department had said that municipalities should mobilise resources and support public participation exercises. The Department was however heavily attacked by municipalities and councillors who argued that municipalities could not be burdened with such responsibility, Further in their experience, many of those invited to such a meeting came with personal un-mandated interests and agendas. Whilst such processes were needed they had to be managed properly and it would have cost implications for municipalities.

Mr Africa said that Clauses 9 and 10 of the Bill had to be looked at where the duty of governing structures to build the capacity of communities to participate in the process was laid out. Philosophically, he said the Department had tried to give effect to the notion of participatory governance, by trying to be as inclusive as possible. This was why it had at the very outset redefined the notion of a municipality by expressly talking about three components: The Council, the Officials and the Community. In Chapter Two the rights and duties of the three components were explained.

An ANC member wanted to know, given the non-payments and the various delays of payments to municipalities, whether community participation in budget processes, could be included.

Ms Manche said that this was implied in the Bill. There was emphasis placed on participation in the determination of needs and priorities in the IDP process which incorporated financial plans of municipalities.

Mr M Lekgoro (ANC) said that it had to be debated to what extent a Government could go against a popular view within the community and whether going against it actually nullified the concept of public participation.

The Chairperson noted that this was a philosophical question, which had to be addressed at a later stage. He said that this was only a first briefing and this kind of issue would surface during the public hearings as well.

He wondered (on the issue of public participation) whether it was not also relevant that in the Municipal Structures Act it was set out explicitly that a task of the executive of a Municipality was to consult with community organisations. It had to report annually not only on the extent of its consultation but also on the effect /result thereof.

Mr Mohammed Bhabha (ANC, NCOP) was concerned with having notions in a Bill, which could not be implemented. The chairperson added that in order for a committee to evaluate a Bill it had to be equipped to evaluate how practical it was to implement the Bill. He also did not know why the Bill was structured the way it was. It started with public participation, then development planning. He wanted to know why it jumped to performance management. Whilst he could see the link he felt that the restructuring of administration and human resources followed by municipal services was a more logical step before talking about performance management.

Ms Manche said that the structure of the Bill would be re-looked at. She reminded members that it had taken the Department a long time to get to this stage of the Bill. Many issues had been raised about how practical the Bill was and whether it could be implementable. It had taken six months to eliminate envisaged provisions from the Bill when it was evident that smaller municipalities would not be able to implement there. Essentially the point which had to be made, was that a new system was being put in place. The Bill dealt with internal systems within a Municipality and it was recognised that much of what was in the Bill was new to municipalities, such as public participation and performance management. However there were areas which were not new. IDP's were not so new. In terms of IDPs there was a lot being learnt from the experiences of the past few years to know what did and did not work at a local level.

Whilst the costing of the new Municipal System was not done in detail, the transparency which would exist in terms of many new processes from performance management to public participation were essential elements of the Department's long term vision for the way municipalities had to be run.

Mr Smith was puzzled by some of the enabling provisions. He said that some of the clauses looked patently absurd. One clause had said that a Council, if it wanted to, could establish a committee to advise it! Lots of them were provisions not needed to be placed into law. He secondly referred to a section stating that the Municipality had to "seek to comply" and "strive to" do something. He wanted to know what this meant legally. Was there a difference between a Municipality having to strive or seek to do something and for them to actually do it?

Ms Manche said that in relation to the various clauses in the Bill which spoke about "seeking to comply" and "striving to achieve", she said that this was not prescriptive on a Municipality, but in using these words it was hoped that municipalities would strive towards certain things. It was correct to say that this was a new concept to try and tone down on the prescriptive nature of clauses. It was indeed neither enabling nor prescriptive.

The Chairperson was impressed with the notion of a phased approach. He felt that a Bill was not simply about what one wanted to achieve overnight but it was also implicit in a set of values and codes. He felt that what Mr Smith was saying answered his own question. There was something in between enabling and mandatory, which had been done. And the reason for this was to take account of some of the questions being raised about implementability.

The next member was concerned with the fact that there was much prescription in the Act but there was nothing that said what would happen if the prescriptions were not met. For example in Clause 24 it stated that a Municipal Council has to do an IDP within a certain period. In Clause 34 however the Minister is allowed to provide incentives for those who actually did do this within the prescribed period. Clearly there was an anticipation that municipalities would not comply with the prescribed period. This was problematic. He wanted to know what the value of the word "must" was in many parts of the Bill.

Ms Manche said that it was recognised that not all municipalities would be able to comply with the provisions of the Bill from day one. There was a system being put in place, in line with a longer-term vision to perhaps have full compliance over a long-term period.

Mr Magashule asked how Council would objectively be able to measure performance of the municipal managers.

Mr Sekele said that Chapter 7 dealing with Public Administration went some way in terms of dealing with this issue. Council would need to set key performance indicators for municipal managers, which would be mutually agreed measures. This would do away with subjectivity and bias in this area of determining what constituted good and bad performance. He said that any non-performance of officials could be dealt with in terms of the Labour Relations Act.

He said that a more complex issue was how people currently in the employ of municipalities would be dealt with. The Department believed that Council was the employer of current staff and as such should deal with this issue. He said that the Department had been accused of passing the buck in this regard. On the other hand some municipalities felt that they would be able to find creative and innovative ways of dealing with this. The Department was caught up between introducing a centralised approach or leaving it to municipalities. For now this would be left to municipalities but if there were problems this would have to be looked at again. A number of municipalities had already started to deal with this issue in creative ways.

Mr Bhabha felt that this area had to be revisited again. He felt that it was crucial and should not be underestimated. The implementation of many policies would hinge on the latter part of Mr Sekele's input. What worried Mr Bhabha was that there were a number of contracts by which municipalities were bound . In small municipalities especially, where the margin of error was so small, the performance of the Municipality depended largely on the abilities of a CEO. The entire system would in this case fall apart if the Municipality could not negotiate. Instead of a centralised approach, he said that there had to be a guideline since the problem with the smaller municipalities was that they depended on these very CEOs for opinions.

Mr Smith felt that the obligations in respect of financial remuneration of the person would remain, however the person would be deprived of powers and functions because there would be a new municipal manager. He thought that this was the way the problem would be dealt with and asked if he was correct.

Ms Manche realised that giving the Municipality the task to deal with this issue was taking the easy way out. She said that this issue had to be revisited. Where there were three CEOs as a result of the amalgamation of municipalities, but one municipal manager she said that the remuneration would remain despite there being no position for two of the CEOs. It was then the responsibility of the Municipality to enter into negotiations with the person with regard to redeployment for example to perhaps an HOD post (at the same salary scale and conditions of employment.)

Mr Magashule supported an approach, which was central and gave some sought of a guideline. He felt that if it was left to municipalities, decisions taken would simply incorporate the positions of the very CEOs who needed to be negotiated with.

Mr Bhaba suggested that there were three areas, which needed to be looked into:
The first was whether there was any possibility that any employees, as a result of the amalgamation of municipalities, would be able to take the municipalities to court on the basis of constructive dismissal if the municipalities changed these employees' positions. This was very important because this happened in the pre-interim phase where a number of municipalities were handicapped by huge legal cases as a result of this. He said that there were judicial precedents in a number of cases in this regard. He felt that there had to be enabling provisions in the Bill to ensure that this would not happen.

Secondly he said that legal opinion had to be obtained on whether, once there was an assumption of new legal obligations, one could re-examine the obligations being assumed in terms of the contracts.

Thirdly, if this did not happen he asked what the cost implications of rationalisation would be. In the end duplication had to be avoided. If in the end three CEOs existed in a Municipality and two CEO salaries had to be paid, the entire restructuring process would be an exercise in futility, since one would only see the effects of it in five or six years time and thus the whole process would be doomed to failure from the beginning.

Mr Sekele said that this issue was clearly complex. There were a number of role players involved not least of which was a bargaining council. He said that the bargaining council's impact on this issue had to be looked at.
In line with the proposed new demarcations, many municipalities were beginning to establish joint committees to look at issues of transition including the issues being raised by members. He felt that in view of Mr Bhabha's proposal that the issue be investigated further, it would perhaps be useful for the Department to do a snap survey to look at what was actually emerging from these joint committees being established, in terms of what the trends and difficulties were and what the strategies proposed to deal with issues like these involved.

The mmeting was concluded.

Appendix 1
MEMORANDUM ON THE OBJECTS OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT: MUNICIPAL SYSTEMS BILL, 2000

1. SCOPE OF THE BILL
The Municipal Systems Bill is the third piece of legislation to give effect to the Local Government White Paper, the first two being the Municipal Demarcation Act and Municipal Structures Act. While the first two Acts deal with the institutional and jurisdictional aspects of the local government transformation process, the Municipal Systems Bill seeks to establish the basic principles and mechanisms to give effect to our collective vision of "developmental government". Its focus is therefore primarily on the internal systems and administration of the municipality.

The Bill will be complemented by and is aligned with the legislation to be enacted by the Department of Finance dealing with issues of financial management, budgeting, borrowing and treasury control, as well as legislation reforming the property rating and taxation system.

Together this suite of legislation will complete the process of reviewing and reforming the overall regulatory system for local government, and will enable government to repeal virtually the entire body of legislation and provincial ordinances inherited from the apartheid era. It is proposed to deal with the repeal process early in the year 2000.

The Bill has been drafted on the basis of a detailed investigation into the current capacity problems of local government, and an analysis of existing approaches and innovations to service delivery in local government.
The legislative approach adopted in the Municipal Systems Bill is broadly enabling, and seeks to achieve a degree of equivalence and balance between the regulatory frameworks governing the three spheres of government. The Bill is mandatory only to the extent that the fundamental elements of public sector reform, socio-economic development, delivery of basic services, and public reporting and accountability need to be applied uniformly on a country-wide basis.
The Bill describes the core processes or elements that are essential to realising a truly developmental local government system. These include participatory governance, integrated development planning, performance management and reporting, resource allocation and organisational change. The Bill links these processes into a single cycle at local level, that will align various sectoral initiatives from national and provincial government departments with a municipality's own capacity and processes. This will ensure better synergy between local, provincial and national initiatives, and a more effective system of inter-governmental relations.

In summary the Bill aims to:

● Clarify the legal nature of a municipality, and, by including the communities, residents and ratepayers within the municipal area in the definition of a municipality, establish a system of internal relationships for effective participatory governance, in which the different components of a municipality have certain key rights and responsibilities. This lays the foundation for the later Chapters in the Bill, in which participatory processes are critical to the success of initiatives such as planning and performance management.

● Establish certain basic requirements for public accountability and participation which are essential to the long term sustainability of the municipality.

● Assign powers of general competence to local government, and manage the process of decentralising functions to local government to ensure proper co-ordination of the decentralisation process and the prevention of unfunded mandates.

● Regulate the promulgation of municipal by-laws to achieve greater symmetry between national, provincial and local legislative actions.

● Clarify the nature of the legislative and executive power of municipalities, and in particular develop the notion of a separation between the roles of "service authority" and "service provider". This separation was initially introduced through the Water Services Act, and it is proposed to extend this to all municipal services. As "service authorities" municipalities remain responsible for and must see to the effective delivery of a particular service, and provide a policy and regulatory framework within which that service is provided, subject to any applicable national or provincial legislation. This ensures that municipalities take full responsibility for the service delivery process, while enabling them to choose the most appropriate service provider from a menu of options.

● Rationalise the system of municipal planning into a single comprehensive 5 yearly planning cycle, subject to annual monitoring and review, in which Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) are adopted by municipal councils as their core planning and management instrument. This system provides an important framework for municipalities to comply with the more detailed sectoral planning requirements of various national Departments. By linking their sectoral planning requirements into the municipality's IDP and budgeting processes, line Departments will achieve better integration of initiatives, improved compliance, as well as benefit from the alignment of sectoral strategies with municipal budgets and human resource deployment in terms of legal obligations.

● Establish a performance management system for local government, including a system of measuring and evaluating performance in priority areas, and reporting annually to citizens and other spheres of government, so that performance can be compared across the whole of local government, and under-performance in critical areas identified at an early stage. This will provide municipalities with a tool to evaluate progress with their IDP, as well as a more rational and informed basis for choosing appropriate service providers. It will also enable a far more appropriate and targeted system of capacity building and intervention to be put in place by national and provincial government.

● Entrench the "Batho Pele" principles in local public administration, and synchronise local administrative reform with the system of performance contracts, performance evaluation, codes of conduct, job evaluation, performance incentives, managerial responsibilities and delegations being implemented in national and provincial government.

● Provide a clear regulatory framework for municipal service partnerships, particularly processes such as competitive bidding, dealing with unsolicited proposals, and contract monitoring and compliance, which gives legal effect to the framework agreement on restructuring municipal services signed between government and COSATU on 16 December 1998.

● Make provision for municipal service districts, including multi-jurisdictional service districts in which municipalities combine their regulatory powers in order to manage service provision on a more functional basis.

● Establish a set of principles and guidelines to guide the setting of tariffs for municipal services, in order to help municipalities ensure long term sustainability of service delivery, and establish mechanisms for assisting indigent households.

● Empower municipalities to implement tough and effective credit control and debt collection strategies, in order to deal with non-payment for services, while at the same time making sure that proper customer management systems are established and that the genuinely indigent receive targeted relief.

● Create a clear framework to guide national and provincial monitoring and capacity building in terms of the Constitution, which establishes essential minimum standards for service delivery, rationalises existing monitoring systems, and aims over the longer term to build an effective, integrated, performance oriented service delivery system.
The various provisions of the Bill will be implemented incrementally, with the bulk of the Bill's provisions becoming effective after the date of the next local government elections. Different provisions will be phased in over different timeframes for various categories and classes of municipalities, as the requisite capacity to implement the provisions of the legislation develops. The Bill provides for the Minister to issue regulations in a large number of areas, which will also be used to build capacity in municipalities incrementally. The Bill will enable municipalities, over time, to move towards a more performance orientated "Batho Pele" approach to service delivery, and lead to a progressive build-up of municipal capacity to perform the functions allocated to local government by the Constitution and subsequent legislation.

2. OTHER DEPARTMENTS AND ORGANISATIONS CONSULTED:
In the process of drafting the Bill the following organisations and forums have been consulted:
All nine provincial MEC's for local government
SALGA
Department of Land Affairs
Department of Finance
Department of State Expenditure
Department of Minerals and Energy
Department for Public Service and Administration
Department of Labour
Department of Housing
Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Department of Health
Department of Transport
Department of Water Affairs and Forestry
Office for Public Enterprises
Office of the Auditor-General
South African Municipal Workers Union
Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Unions
Urban Sector Network
National Land Committee
Legal Resources Centre
Gender Advocacy Programme
Mvula Trust
Institute for Local Government Managers
Institute for Municipal Administrators of South Africa
Institute for Municipal Finance Officers
Development and Planning Commission
All metropolitan municipalities, district and local councils
Development Bank of Southern Africa

FORUMS
Local Government MINMEC
Local Government Sectoral Forum
Local Government Bargaining Council
NEDLAC

3. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
No direct financial implications are foreseen. Provision has been made in the budget of the Department for the publication of the Bill, and the communication of the provisions of the Bill after promulgation in user friendly guidelines and handbooks.

4. PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE
The Department of Provincial and Local Government and the State Law Advisers are of the opinion that the Bill should be dealt with in accordance with the procedure set out in section 75 of the Constitution since it contains no provision to which the procedure set out in section 74 or 76 of the Constitution applies.

5. OFFICIAL TEXT
The English text is the official text of the Bill. The Afrikaans text is the official translated version of the Bill.