Councils to improve service delivery
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Tuesday February 15, 2022 12:42
According to the ministry’s spokesperson Masego Ramakgathi, they took stock of the ministry’s past performance and equally deliberated on the five-year Strategy and Transformation Plan (MSTP 2021-2025), Reset Agenda as well as the National Development Plan (NDP) 12 priorities.
“In addressing broader performance issues, the retreat looked into programmes, projects and initiatives for the financial year 2022-2023 including maintenance of public facilities, local economic development, social protection, environmental cleanliness, budget utilisation, revenue collection and review of policies and frameworks,” he said.
“An update on key projects such as Local Economic Development (LED) Framework and Strategy, National Social Protection Framework (NSPF), Institutional Review, the roll-out of the automated and digitised Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system, Decentralisation Policy as well as business process re-engineering and automation was provided to track progress,” he added.
The ministry’s problems might pile as its budget is too tight since it deals with community issues. Minister of Finance and Economic Development Peggy Serame has allocated MLGRD the fourth largest share of the Ministerial Recurrent Budget amounting to P7.15 billion or 13.4%.
According to Serame, total provision for local authorities amounts to P4.34 billion or 8.5 percent of the ministerial recurrent budget for the financial year 2021-2022 and P4.7 billion or 7.81 percent of the proposed budget for 2022-2023.
Therefore, this according to the minister, constitutes 2.18 percent and 1.92 percent of the GDP for 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 respectively.
The ministry’s spokesperson says the Revenue Support Grant (RSG) will be reduced, particularly to urban councils to encourage them to generate their revenues so that they can fund their own programmes.
Meanwhile, the budget allocations for Social Protection Programmes (SPP) that fall under the development budget such as Ipelegeng, Poverty Eradication, Destitute and Constituency Community Programmes (CCP) have been maintained, adding that the area-specific CCP is meant to stimulate the local economy in that all procurement should benefit people in the locality.
However, the ministry has been allocated the second-largest share of the proposed Development Budget at P2 billion or 12.5% to continue implementation of SPPs such as CCP, procurement of tablets for primary schools and facilities backlog eradication project.