[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Jeff Rudin on SA water crisis

[Patrick Bond]

Sunday Times
Water crisis: research and action pleas ignored
Published:Feb 10, 2008

DISAPPOINTMENT: Thabo Mbeki and his team have failed the fundamental 
test of an elected government

ALACK of accountability, rather than a skills shortage, lies at the 
heart of the problem referred to in “Now it’s a water crisis” (February 3).

A service-delivery crisis occurs when incompetence is married to 
indifference and management is allowed to remain unaccountable. Three 
remedies offer themselves:

# Performance appraisal ought to be applied to senior managers so that 
their pay is directly dependent on their performance.

# Disciplinary action must be taken against managers who are 
persistently unable to meet the terms of their contracts of employment.

# The Department of Water Affairs & Forestry must fulfil its duties as a 
national statutory enforcement authority. That its enforcement unit 
consists of a mere 15 people remains a scandal.

Skills are still mostly available; the problem is that they are no 
longer to be found in the municipalities themselves.

Neo-liberalism and BEE have resulted in the stampede to outsource as 
many municipal functions as possible. This lucrative business for the 
private sector comes at enormous public cost.

Municipalities have been allowed to employ consultants to do the work 
that unsuitable managers are not able to do.

This has resulted in a huge loss of skills, as staff have left local 
government employ to set themselves up as consultants — doing much the 
same work as before but at considerably better pay.

Municipalities continue to ignore the skills available among its 
experienced workers. Research by the Department of Provinces and Local 
Government , the SA Local Government Association and the SA Municipal 
Workers Union, in 2002/03 demonstrated the untapped capacity on which 
municipalities could be drawing.

Unfortunately this research, like much of that quoted in the Business 
Times article, remains ignored.

— Jeff Rudin, Athlone