Document: Tlokwe City Council: IDP 2011/12

At the strategic planning session held from February 23 to 25, 2011 senior management of Tlokwe City Council drafted a plan of action for the 2011/12 financial year with clear strategic objectives and business plans that sought to respond to key institutional challenges. From experiences and lessons learned the municipality was therefore able to develop and adopt strategies that would ensure a movement forward, the consolidation of past achievements and the mitigation of current shortcomings.

Consequently, this year, which also signals the beginning of the new term for the incoming Council, the strategic document is qualitatively different from the previous ones as it seeks to conclude some of the outstanding business of the outgoing Council whilst at the same time laying the foundation for the medium term leading up to 2015/16.

However, it needs to be pointed out that over the past two generations of IDP, we have overcome some immense institutional and service delivery challenges. During the initial stages of the two five-year terms our focus has been on planning, institutional capacity building, political and administrative stabilization and corporate governance.

Going forward we will continue to consolidate in the areas of institutional capacity building and corporate governance. Specifically in this regard we will finalise the review and re-alignment of our organogram and expedite the filling of current key vacant posts.

Furthermore we will also focus on enhancing the day-to-day provision of services whilst at the same time continuing to build physical infrastructure particularly in the formerly disadvantaged areas. The emphasis will fall on improving the quality and level of service provision in particular and the performance of the municipality in general. Some sterling work has already been done in the past, such as for example, our achievement of the „blue drop‟ status for our drinking water. We will strive to maintain this standard and extend it to other areas as well. For instance, our next target will have to be the „green drop‟ status for our sewerage works.

We are, however, currently faced with a harsh reality of a still too wide gap between the expectations of our stakeholders and the institutional capacity of our municipality. During the 2011/12 financial year and the medium term leading up to 2015/16, more attention will have to be given to initiatives to improve the financial viability and revenue base of the municipality.

We understand that we will, with the finalization of the 2011/12 and subsequent IDP and budget financial years, have to take cognizance of the state of the economy, the impact of municipal costs on our economy and the fact that grant- and loan funding is becoming less sustainable in the long term. Nevertheless, the first half of the 2011 calendar year proved to be a tremendous challenge for the country‟s local government in general and our municipality in particular due to the preparations for the May 18 Local Government Elections which coincided with our current IDP/ Budget cycle.The provisions prescribed in Circular 54 of the Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003 effectively meant that we had to work within tight timeframes to ensure that all the IDP /Budget processes are completed on time.

This placed a lot of pressure on our councillors, officials, communities and all other stakeholders. I wish to express my gratitude to all of them for their valuable contributions to the compilation of this document. A collective effort by all stakeholders is required to overcome the challenges faced by our municipality.
I trust that this strategic document will also serve as a guiding tool for the new councillors who will start their new term of office after the Local Government Elections and also improve and fast track quality service delivery to our communities.

In the municipal‟s senior management they already have a keen and dedicated partner. I commit the senior management wholly to the strategic thrust outlined in this document.