The responsibility to monitor local economic development and other economic development and job creation strategies resides both with Parliament and the executive, but also with civil society. For our part, obviously, we work with the provincial MECs and we have raised these issues in Minmec and other structures where we meet with the provincial MECs.
We are aware that in our State of Local Government report, which you well know is possibly the most extensive investigation of what is happening in municipalities that we have ever done since 1994, we arrived at the conclusion that, yes, there is a lot of money that has been mismanaged and that the job creation that has been promised has not happened. We have been quite open and transparent that, given the resource capacity and other constraints at municipal level, local economic development is actually not easy to give effect to; there are no easy answers in this regard.
But what we have seen in the more recent past, especially with the New Growth Path and the greatest stress on job creation in the President's state of the nation address, is that municipalities are taking this more seriously. It is in their self-interest, moreover, because the more jobs that are created, the better their constituents or citizens are able to pay for services.
In one very important respect I think we have been doing especially well by any measure, including that of the civil society actors who monitor us, and that is in the Community Work Programme. We exceeded our targets, as you well know; we reported to you on this in the budget speeches for last year. In fact, regarding the aim, we got 80 000 jobs created across a wide range of municipalities in this country and we are now seeking to escalate this. The National Treasury and we are looking into more funding for that. So, the Community Work Programme has been quite a remarkable success.