Service delivery | Municipalities battling to meet demand
UMNGENI - Municipalities continue to leave residents wanting across the country.
Essential service delivery needs like water, electricity, road maintenance and sanitation remain unfulfilled.
Umngeni Local Municipality Mayor, Christopher Pappas says apart from rampant corruption, the geographical set-up of municipalities also present an uphill battle.
Pappas said, "the way that our municipalities have been drawn up, in other ways the geographic boundaries of municipalities. Some municipalities were never made to succeed, you look at many of the rural municipalities here in KZN, you look at their ability to generate revenue and the limited options that we have as municipalities to generate our own revenue, and then, you know, it's almost setting people up for failure."
"When you add corruption on that and inefficiencies, skills deficits, then you just make that problem worse. So on the one case, the structure of local government that we have in South Africa in places like KZN is not helping to succeed, but then all the other endemic problems that we have as a country and as a province just exacerbate that and make it a lot worse."