The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) Eastern Cape will host its Annual Provincial Members Assembly (PMA) on December 4–5, at the East London International Convention Centre in Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCM).
A statement by SALGA highlighted that the Provincial Members Assembly brings together representatives from all municipalities and other stakeholders in the Eastern Cape Province. The PMA is an essential forum to drive the strategic agenda of local government in alignment with the directives of the Provincial Conference that took place in 2021.
The statement read: “SALGA Constitution prescribes that the Provincial Executive Committee convene a Provincial Members Assembly (PMA) to review and report on the organisation’s performance in the past year and adopt the action plan for the ensuing year.
“The assembly also serves as a strategic platform for members to discuss internal as well as external factors/challenges confronting the sector to strengthen cooperative governance and facilitate solutions for the local government sector.
“The PMA therefore is an annual gathering and premier event for SALGA members in Eastern Cape. It offers opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, and knowledge exchange in best practices in the sector while shaping the future agenda of organised local government in the province.”
The statement explained this year’s PMA themee will be “Restoring the local government image through building accountable and responsive governance”.
“The province’s PMA takes place at a time when the local government sector is experiencing several challenges including but not limited to perceived declining levels of oversight, institutional capacity constraints, inadequate funding coupled with compromised internal controls systems, lower revenue collection levels, increasing attacks of municipal infrastructure and excessive costs of service delivery.
“In addition to these are serious concerns about the decaying state of our towns, poor branding of municipal buildings, the questionable extent of climate adaptability of our infrastructure, poor disaster response capability, emerging existential challenges linked to an increasing number of off – grid consumers as well as poor municipal billing systems.
“To a greater extent, the programme is structured in such a manner that it enables participants to dissect issues and package concrete actionable solutions,” the statement concluded.
