Consulting Engineers South Africa (Cesa) on Wednesday stated that it welcomed government’s move to lead municipalities back to basics and to put in place institutional mechanisms to enable them to deliver core municipal services, as announced by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Pravin Gordhan in his 2014/15 Budget Vote.

The Minister last week stated that while the Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department CoGTA had a responsibility to build a system of local governance, which was a long-term project, the ministry was also tasked with dealing with immediate operational difficulties within local government.

"We want every municipality in South Africa to ensure that it undertakes core basic functions as efficiently, effectively, and religiously as is humanly possible," Gordhan told reporters prior to his Budget Vote in Parliament.

Cesa added that it also welcomed the call by the Minister to establish an advisory committee of eminent persons drawn from various sectors, including civil society, to advise him on issues arising in the procurement system within local government, as well as how to increase the integrity and the value system in this sphere of the public sector.

Cesa said this aligned well with the concept of establishing a watchdog for the construction industry, which was something Cesa had been strongly advocating for a number of years.

“For years now, we have been calling for a total overhaul of the current procurement regime, which has relegated the duty of consulting engineers from that of the trusted adviser to clients to a situation where engineers have to tender for work. Hence, we are ready to partner with CoGTA in its quest to create an advisory committee of eminent persons,” Cesa CEO Lefadi Makibinyane said.

Meanwhile, Cesa said audits conducted by the Auditor-General had shown over many years that municipalities’ financial management fell short of requirements, which had been severely compounded by the exodus of technical skills and engineering expertise from municipalities since 1994. The organisation added that it was committed to assisting municipalities in addressing this problem, in the short term, through the employment of its member firms and, in the long term, through the training and mentoring of municipal technical staff.

Gordhan said, within six months, CoGTA would put systems in place to enable it to monitor the performance of every municipality on a day-to-day basis, which would provide a high degree of transparency and accountability to citizens.

Makibinyane added that with regard to the Minister’s views on economic development, such as the Community Work Programme and the development of local economics, Cesa believed that its member firms, being responsible for infrastructure planning and design, were in a strong position to support municipalities and contribute significantly in this regard.

“We shall continue to make it clear that preparation of infrastructure development projects, their planning and design lies within the expertise of the consulting engineering profession and until such time, which may take decades, that the municipalities have built this capacity, our member firms shall continue to be the only source of support at the national, provincial and local government [level],” Makibinyane said.