Question NW2140 to the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs

Reply:

Not all of the following specified goals in the Budget Vote in 2022 have been met yet:

• The allocation of R50,6 billion through the Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) over the MTSF.
• The delivery of basic services, roads, and social infrastructure for poor households in 218 municipalities through the MIG.
• Directing 10% of the MIG at fulfilling the gap as it relates to repairs and maintenance and;
• 5% of the MIG addressing Infrastructure Asset Management Planning.

The medium term expenditure figure is divided as follows:

2022/23 R‘000	2023/24 R’000	2024/25 R’000	Total R‘000
17 545 049	18 330 970	19 150 183	55 026 202

The first specified goal above is on track as R17 545 049 000 was allocated and disbursed to municipalities in 2022/23 financial year. As the municipal financial year ended at the end of June 2023, the assessment of the rest of the specied goals above, which is the performance of the MIG in 2022/23 year, is currently underway to be finalised at the end of this quarter as required in terms of Section 10 (8) of the Division of Revenue Act (DoRA), 2023.

1. The following are some of the common barriers to meeting the specified goals on the MIG programme in particular, and service delivery in general:

• Challenges with the political leadership and environment, governance, institutional management, financial management. The assessment of the state of local government in 2021 and repeated in 2022 highlighted that all these challenges contribute to poor service delivery and implementation of programmes like the MIG.
• Lack of capacity in municipalities especially professionally registered built environment practitioners to effectively manage infrastructure development remains a challenge.
• Uncoordinated support to municipalities in terms of section 154 of the Constitution
• Consequence management to non-MIG performers lead to communities being deprived of services when the non spent portion of the MIG grant is re-allocated to the spending municipalities.

1. A number of interventions and measures were put in place to deal with the above-mentioned barriers including the following:

• The implementation of the Municipal Support and Intervention Plan (MSIP) that was developed as a response to the State of Local Government Report of 2021. The MSIP provides action plans for all pillars that affect service delivery mentioned above and the implementation thereof, is done by all of government including provincial and national departments.
• The Department of Cooperative Governance (DCOG) continues to deploy technical professionals through the Municipal Infrastructure support Agent (MISA) to support municipalities with infrastructure development throughout the project life cycle. To-date MISA has deployed 103 built environment professionals (86 of which are professionally registered with Statutory bodies as engineers and town planners) across all 9 provinces.
• The implementation of the District Development Model (DDM) is beginning to bear fruit in the coordinated support towards local government. This is evidenced, among other iniatiatives, by the resuscitation of the Green Drop and Blue Drop programmes by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) and consequent joint development of improvement plans for dysfunctional municipalities. The Green Drop Report was released in 2022 while the Blue Drop Watch Report was released in June 2023 by DWS. This assists in joint infrastructure grants management like the MIG and those administered by DWS like the Water Services Infrastructure Grant. This joint collaboration aims to ensure that over the MTSF the specified goals are met especially related to Asset Management Planning and repairs and maintenance.
• The creation of the MIG 6B indirect grant has been included in the MIG Framework as a instrument aimed at ensuring that deserving communities are not disadvantaged by non-performing MIG receiving municipalities. This will see DCOG implementing projects on behalf of those perennial non-performing municipalities as a contribution towards specified goals.

End.