The FF Plus provided critical input on the organisational review of the Ekurhuleni Metro with the aim of improving service delivery.
The party put pressure on the Metro Council not to table the review plan during the January 2024 council meeting to allow for an opportunity to provide important input on the plan.
The FF Plus officially submitted its input on the review plan to the Metro on 9 February.
The party’s input includes several recommendations, but also burning questions regarding the implications of the organisational review, as proposed by the ANC/EFF metro government.
One of the plan’s proposals is to merge several departments, namely, Economic Development, City Planning, Fixed Property, Communication, Marketing, Tourism, Strategy and Service Delivery Coordination.
It entails the merging of a number of very diverse functions and the FF Plus is concerned about how all these functions will be managed under a single umbrella department. An additional concern relates to how the merger will affect the Metro Council’s respective oversight committees, particularly as regards their composition and mandate.
The plan further entails renaming departments, creating new divisions and redeploying existing staff members.
The FF Plus doubts whether the ANC/EFF government will be able to seamlessly implement all these changes. The impact of reducing staff numbers in certain divisions on service delivery should also be taken into account.
It is, however, equally alarming that staff numbers are only reduced from 21 526 to 21 522 employees – a cutback of only four positions. It makes no sense that this will bring about savings, on the one hand, and improve service delivery, on the other, with the inflated and clumsy administration already providing poor service delivery.
Clearly, the ANC/EFF government does not want to use this opportunity to make the Metro more efficient and cut back on costs.
Moreover, it is extremely alarming that the internal audit unit will be moved to the City Manager’s Office.
This creates a substantial conflict of interest that will significantly weaken oversight of the Metro’s management, especially considering the fact that the audit unit should function independently.
There are many more issues that concern the FF Plus. The party has, therefore, made a series of proposals, such as conducting an impact study on the plan, the implementation of robust change-management processes, a phased-implementation process, providing clarity about roles and responsibilities, measuring and evaluating processes, and managing implementation resistance.
Finally, the FF Plus requests that an inquiry should be done to determine whether it would be sensible and viable to create a Department of Basic Service Delivery.
It could serve as a comprehensive service shop for Water and Sanitation, Energy and Waste Disposal, each of which will fall under separate divisions within the same department.
In this way, the department will be able to provide effective and uniform service delivery.
The FF Plus will keep putting pressure on the ANC/EFF government to improve service delivery to residents.
;
