With the leadership of Mogale City having set out a bold commitment to creating a productive, well governed and financially viable municipality that will provide quality services to all communities, major firsts and achievement recognition shouldn’t come as a surprise.
This commitment was formulated around a business turnaround strategy commonly used by companies to address performance decline and achieve profitability. Within the context of Mogale City as a local government entity, this turnaround strategy was geared towards meeting constitutional and legal mandates, namely to:
- provide democratic and accountable government for local communities
- ensure sustainable provision of services
- promote social and economic development
- promote a healthy and safe environment, and
- encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in local government matters
Since 2022, the major focus has been on institutional restructuring to provide for better professional and institutional fit, financial engineering through cost recovery interventions, financial rationalisation, as well as service delivery improvements. Collectively, these have recently yielded two key milestones:
1. A fully funded budget
Since the inception of MsCOA (a financial reporting regulatory reform) in 2017, the city’s projected and allocated revenues are sufficient to cover its budgeted commitments for the first time. This will allow the city to focus on service delivery without the pressure of budget support programmes.
2. SALGA Municipal Achievement Award
This milestone, also a first since MsCOA introduction, recognises and honours Mogale City’s exemplary financial management and adherence to the Municipal Finance Management Act and therefore represents the extent to which the city undertakes responsible, accountable and service delivery-based grant management.
Whilst these among other major milestone achievements that the municipality will unveil over the next few months, the municipality calls on our communities to join and support us in rebuilding the city. Yes, Mogale City is not perfect but is improving and definitely not on the brink of service delivery collapse as some detractors try hard to portray.