Deputy Chairperson, His Excellency the President of South Africa, J G Zuma, Chairperson of the NCOP, hon premiers, hon speakers, members of the executive council, hon Members of Parliament and members of the provincial legislature, executive mayors and mayors, Salga representatives, councillors, traditional leaders, ladies and gentlemen, I stand to support the address by the President of South Africa, His Excellency President J G Zuma.
The pace of service delivery in provinces is not only dictated by the budget allocation and resources one has towards addressing the needs of our communities. Those needs come about through the legacies that were left behind by apartheid. The spate of incidents of municipal unrest that has taken place in the past year also points to the growing demand by our people for speedier service delivery despite our budgetary constraints in the provinces. The working together of all spheres of government therefore becomes critical in addressing this particular demand, while also noting that service delivery occurs in the local government space and sphere.
There is a growing need for us to harness our resources for the acceleration of poverty eradication through delivery of clean water and proper sanitation, and provision of electricity and decent shelter. We need to have a joint focus on the manner in which we conduct our government business, focusing on planning, enhancement of competencies and capacity to implement. We need to strengthen our monitoring and evaluation processes and the Ministries dealing with planning, monitoring and evaluation must strengthen this function across all spheres of government.
We need to also focus on the signed delivery and performance agreements, as the President has alluded, in order to improve performance across all spheres of government. We must discharge our responsibilities with effectiveness and efficiency, emphasising the priorities that we have set ourselves to achieve, using the Batho Pele principles. Public representatives must close the social distance that sometimes exists between them and the communities they serve; queries from the communities must be processed promptly within the set timeframes.
The Mpumalanga government has, in the past year, through its improved intergovernmental relations, managed to address challenges with regard to municipal unrest that erupted throughout the province immediately after the 2009 national government elections - three months after the elections, to be exact.
We are still indicating that it was the right of the people to do this. We have put four municipalities under section 139 and we have succeeded in stabilising these municipalities. As I am speaking all municipalities are currently stable. There were councillors who were forced to resign after these interventions by the province and let me indicate that in all the by- elections that resulted from these processes the ANC managed to win all seats. [Applause.] We have also launched a successful comprehensive rural development programme in the Mkhondo municipality in the Gert Sibande District. Our intention in the coming financial year is to roll out this programme to five more municipalities within the province. Under agriculture, we also have a programme called Masibuyele Emasimini whereby seeds are issued to households and we assist the households with ploughing. This programme is being rolled out throughout the province, together with the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs; we are rolling out massive water infrastructure projects across the province towards the provision of clean potable water to our communities.
We are continuously rehabilitating our coal haulage routes, the road network that is there in the Gert Sibande and Nkangala districts. We are going to continuously upgrade our roads. In the coming financial year we aim to upgrade up to 12 different roads across the province. We are going to continuously rehabilitate the route network that we have.
On the education front, let me indicate that we are currently doing away with all unsafe structures and our target is to make sure that all children learn under a safe roof, in a proper classroom. Realising that we did not perform very well in our examinations in the past year, we have come up with support programmes for learners. We are also happy with the support of and interventions that the Ministry of Basic Education has made in normalising challenges with regard to irregularities in the matric examination.
We are looking forward to an uneventful examination process and much improved examination results. We are also grateful for the support we enjoy from the Ministry of Higher Education towards the building of a university in the province; this is highly appreciated. We have made significant strides towards the provision of jobs.