Madam Chair, members of this House, thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. I would like to acknowledge the budget speech of Minister Sicelo Shiceka, which he delivered to the country last Tuesday, 23 June 2009. The speech is setting a clear direction for a local government programme of action for the next five years. The Western Cape is committed to working with the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs to achieve these objectives. I am pleased to say that Minister Shiceka's priorities and the provincial priorities are well aligned.
Mr Shiceka emphasised the importance of co-operative governance, greater discipline amongst councillors and officials, better service delivery, and development partnerships.
Co-operative governance can only work if we rise above party politics and work together. We have quarterly meetings of the provincial advisory forum, which are chaired by the MEC for local government, and we also have provincial co-ordinating forums, which are chaired by the Premier. In the coming year we shall ensure that these meetings are not talk shops but places where we can learn from one another. They should be places where we strengthen our relationship with national and provincial departments. I am pleased that Mr Sicelo Shiceka has agreed to come to a forthcoming provincial advisory forum. We are also prioritising service delivery. Municipalities in the Western Cape only spent 78% of their capital budgets last year and we are going to increase this significantly in the coming year.
Another problem is that municipalities are not spending enough on maintaining the infrastructure that they do have. The province expects municipalities to spend at least 10% of their operational budgets on infrastructure maintenance, phased in over the next four years.
We are also doing a comprehensive audit on our water and sanitation infrastructure in order to develop a ten-year provincial infrastructure project and financing plan for municipalities. We are working together with the national Department of Water and Environmental Affairs and the provincial treasury on this project. The province is putting a lot of effort into building the capacity of municipalities. The department is working together with municipalities to finalise the municipal support plans, the MSPs, which identify capacity gaps and say how they could be addressed over the next five years.
Here are some examples of how we are already assisting municipalities. We are helping 19 municipalities to improve their performance management systems. We are assisting municipalities to implement fully the Local Government: Municipal Property Rates Act. Together with Salga, we will provide leadership training to councillors and we are also rolling out code of conduct training to councillors.
I agree with Minister Shiceka that we must instil more discipline in municipalities. We are concerned that there has been a breakdown of discipline among both councillors and officials. The Department of Co- operative Governance and Traditional Affairs is in the process of compiling a list of councillors and officials who owe money to municipalities for rates or services charged. If these debts are not paid within two months, the mayors of these municipalities must answer for this.
We want to make sure that fraud and corruption are eliminated and that councillors and their family members do not unlawfully benefit from municipal contracts. One of the ways to stop fraud is to focus on fraud prevention. The department has developed antifraud guidelines for local government in respect of human resources and finance. We are supporting ten municipalities with the compilation of anticorruption strategies and implementation plans, eight with ethics management planning and ten with debt governance training.
The province has a concern around integrated development plans, the so- called IDPs. We are pleased that 20 out of the 20 municipalities have IDPs that are considered to be credible, but many of these are only IDPs on paper. We are asking the department to check every IDP and make sure that it is an actual plan and not a wish list. We will also help municipalities to improve their integrated planning through the IDP learnership programme. This programme is offered to all municipalities and it includes six modules.
Another significant programme of the province is disaster planning. We have experienced many disasters in the Western Cape during the past 12 months, including floods, fires and violence against foreigners. The long-term solution to disasters is to be proactive and to prevent disasters or reduce their impact. The provincial disaster management centre will focus its efforts on assisting municipalities and provincial departments to do exactly this in the coming year.
I have indicated that there is alignment between national and provincial strategic priorities. However, we as the Western Cape province also have a number of concerns that we will have to raise in Parliament. Firstly, the development of provincial and local government as independent spheres of government must be respected. Service delivery cannot be effective if it is overcentralised. Secondly, while the remuneration of councillors is important, we believe that a sharp and singular focus must be on performance. There are many mayors and councillors in the Western Cape, and I am sure across the country, who work very hard, but as Minister Shiceka himself indicated, we are way short of achieving our service delivery objectives. Our Minister Anton de Waal is concerned about the district councils. Some district councils are well resourced, but are not using the resources to address problems of poverty and underdevelopment.
In conclusion, we look forward to discussing these issues and working with the national government to achieve our objectives. I thank you. [Applause.]