Tag: service delivery

We urge government to fast track professionalisation of local government finance units. This follows the Auditor-General (AG), Tsakani Maluleke’s presentation on the 2021-22 Local Government Audit Outcome to the Standing Committee of the Auditor-General (SCOAG) on Wednesday, 31 May which continues to reflect poor audit outcomes as a result of poor financial planning, inadequate financial controls, skills and capacity, governance and accountability.

The satellite industry is rapidly expanding, and we are starting to see the growth of new industry sectors and the implementation of new applications. With global Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations such as OneWeb driving the development of the African market and Starlink announcing services in selected African countries, both awareness of, and demand for, satellite connectivity services are growing.

Just days after Mpho Phalaatse was removed as Johannesburg’s mayor, a letter to all municipal entities surfaced on social media, in which the Acting City Manager of Johannesburg instructs the boards of municipal entities to cease holding any “strategic sessions, including the [sic] Board and Sub-Committee meetings” until further notice.

The possibility that the Government’s insurer South African Special Risk Insurance Association (SASRIA) may not be able to meet its solvency capital requirements caused by the large claims arising from the riots, looting and destruction of last July is becoming a reality.

The private sector in South Africa is seen as an evil that must be heavily restricted if not expressly prohibited. For a country wherein government service delivery is poor to say the least, one would expect that private enterprise, which keeps us safe through the various security firms and healthy through the various hospitals, would be celebrated.

Instilling trust in taxpayers is vital to increasing tax collection. The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has announced that the 2022 tax season will open in July; a condensed filing season compared to 2021, which was extended due to the long-tail impact of the pandemic.

In March this year, in a much-publicised interview (Neal Froneman gets frank about the lows, and highs, of doing business in South Africa), Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman heavily criticised the state of South Africa’s economy and government, citing a lack of leadership.

June 23rd was Africa Public Service Day, when we were urged to give thanks for our public servants and the work they do. There were no street marches of banner-waving civil servants to mark the occasion, but there was a special media release issued by the Public Servants Association (PSA).

The 2019-20 local government general report released by the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) on 15 June continues to emphasise the lack of accountability and consequence management in local government which impacts service delivery and municipal finance management.

Too many powerful and well-remunerated people in our public sector are letting South Africans down by continually failing to achieve the strategic objectives of the entities they manage. Officials in the public sector must employ clean governance principles across every aspect of their operations.