By Nthambeleni Gabara
Public Service and Administration Deputy Minister, Ms Pinky Kekana is confident that her unannounced visits to frontline service delivery points at the Free State’s provincial capital will result in a tangible improvement in services across the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality.
On Thursday, Deputy Minister Kekana, who is the National District Development Model (DDM) Champion for Mangaung Metro embarked on a day-long unannounced visit to several frontline service points such as Charlotte Maxeke Treatment Centre in Botshabelo, Botshabelo Industrial area, before heading to a cluster of government service delivery facilities in Thaba Nchu.
The District Development Model was identified as a service delivery-planning instrument that aims to respond and address some of the challenges by bringing all spheres of government closer to the people at the district level and to foster an integrated approach to governance. This requires thorough planning, coordination, collaboration, and monitoring, to ensure that government gets value for the money it spends and protects the poor and vulnerable.
The government frontline service delivery facilities that are housed at the dilapidating building owned by the Free State Development Corporation are the Department of Employment and Labour, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), Department of Small Business Development, Tourism and Environment.
The Deputy Minister who strongly emphasised that there is no DDM without both the local and provincial spheres of government wrapped up her oversight visit to evaluate and monitor progress of the 7th Administration’s implementation of the DDM at a Community Health facility at Rocklands township.
At all the government service delivery points, Deputy Minister Kekana who was joined by Mangaung Executive Mayor, Cllr Gregory Nthatisi, MEC for Finance, Economic, Development and Tourism, Mr Moses Ketso Makume assessed the conditions of the facilities, monitored the impact of services that is mostly rendered to the poor and marginalised people. The three government leaders also listened to the day-to-day frustrations of citizens in accessing the services at the frontline service delivery points.
“We are here in Mangaung of course guided by the revolutionary integrated service delivery model (DDM) through which seek to create a citizen-centric public service that is seamless, adaptive and responsive…we monitor how our public servants are accelerating service delivery to citizens, as a caring government, we also listen to the day-to-day challenges that our people go through when they visit our frontline service delivery points.
“As the DPSA, we are going to ensure that all the challenges raised by our citizens are urgently communicated to the relevant government departments…that’s how we are intending to change the lives our people through the DDM.
“Through our oversight visits which is anchored on the DDM, we are able to identify service delivery deficiencies, and we always ensure that there is a sense of urgency in resolving such challenges…yes, embarking on these visits to government’s frontline service points will definitely results in a tangible in the quality of services to our people,” she said.
At the Charlotte Maxeke Treatment Centre, the DDM Champion for Mangaung said the current biggest challenge of the rehabilitation centre it is now temporarily closed as there is no electricity, a situation that necessitated both people who need to be served and staff personnel to be transferred to the nearest health facilities.
However, the Deputy Minister said the issue is receiving urgent attention and she assured residents that very soon the centre will be operating and those who require services will be treated with dignity and respect.
The Treatment Centre Manager, Dithuso Monare said: “we offer rehabilitation services to everyone irrespective of their social class young and old. Our facility has the capacity to accommodate 40 people, if I have to break it down, it will be twenty (20) adult males, ten (10) adults’ females, five adolescent boys and five adolescent girls.
“The rehabilitation programmes differ, for adults the programme is twelve weeks and for teenagers it is eight weeks.
“We are temporarily closed for now due to the electricity challenges, but there is team currently fixing this electricity challenge and there are also repairing our generator as well. We’ve success with our programmes…we’ve a lot of people who have been rehabilitate and when we do follow ups, we realise that after few months, most of them do not relapse.
Free Statement MEC for Economic Development and Tourism, Ketso “Toto” Makume said: “through the DDM approach, all spheres of government come together with one clear plan aimed at improving service delivery, the DDM model does not take away an individual department responsibility, but it requires all of us to harness our resources and make [the service delivery] project very cheap, but in a very coordinated manner.
“Through the DDM, we are trying to avoid a situation where, we double book or double pay for one project…we are also avoiding a situation where not everyone wants to take responsibility which usually delays the implementation of the project.
“It also brings an element of coordination in government wherein if the national government agreed on a particular programme, it is not going to be a top down approach because as the province, we would have been involved through the DDM, so today, we visited several service delivery points trying to check what is it that we can do and what is it that our public servants are doing to improve service delivery, so that we are able to inform the people on the services that our government is providing because we’ve realised that sometimes people are not aware about the services that are being rendered by government.”
Executive Mayor of Mangaung, Cllr Gregory Nthathisi said they have been facing service delivery challenges, but he said they are already feeling the impact of the intervention through DDM model. “There is a massive improvement, and we are grateful for collaborative support that we are receiving through the DDM, and we are committed to work closely with all spheres of government to improve service delivery in our Metropolitan municipality.”
Through the DDM, the emphasis shifted from the three spheres of government aligning plans with each other on a voluntary negotiated method towards a more robust cooperative governance arrangement; that facilitates; guarantees joint work; producing and implementing joined up spatially relevant and reinforcing plans that reflect overall government priorities in each district or metropolitan municipality.
Deputy Minister Kekana says that she will return to Mangaung next month, October.