There is a related question that is coming later which relates to what you say. Maybe we could kill two birds with one stone.
I agree completely with the issue of skills. But, hon member, you can have the best skills available, if the council is dysfunctional it is not going to work. You can have the best skills available but if council meets and passes a resolution to expel a very competent municipal manager it is not going to help.
The way in which we have organised a skills development process in the country, and the Minister of Employment is here and will deal with it maybe, is that there is actually a skills development capacity for local government. There is a Local Government Sector Education and Training Authority, LGSETA, which benefits from the skills fund. That is their job together with the South African Local Government Association, Salga, to identify the training needs so that people who work in the local government sphere knows exactly what they need to do.
More often than not, that is not the nature of the problem; the nature of the problem is political. Therefore, that is why I urged earlier on that we should get our political houses in order in order to solve this problem. It is very important that we do that because we can bring as many chartered accountants, as possible but if they are in a dysfunctional council they will not function at all.
Let me give an example with a problem I now have: The two provinces, whom I won't mention for now, where we allocated funds for the Expanded Public Works Programme and the money has been dispatched and has been spent but not for the purpose intended. So, this might be one of the first people that the Auditor General is going to have to deal with. Money dispatched, money spent, purpose not achieved. Therefore, the people in that Expanded Public Works Programme - which is designed as a kind of a support mechanism in a high unemployment situation ...
IsiZulu:
... bona bayidlile nje imali.
English:
It is gone. There is another thing I will deal with later.