Address by Limpopo Acting Premier Aaron Motsoaledi at the Batho-Pele Day Celebrations, Magetle Stadium, Zebediela, Waterberg District

Programme director
Members of Executive Council here present
Executive Mayor and Mayors
MPLs
Councillors
Traditional leaders
Members of the Senior Management Service
Media representatives
Ladies and gentlemen

Batho Pele is a people's driven public service improvement programme which is anchored on eight principles, which are: consultation, service standards, access to services, courtesy, information, openness and transparency, redress, and value for money.

Public service delivery improvement is a challenge that requires much more than the commitment of Executive Council members, as it also demands skills and the availability of public servants to perform their designated functions and duties from time to time. For Batho Pele to happen, this will obviously require every public servant to put his or her shoulder on the wheel, so that our people are given only the best quality of service wherever they are. Public servants as trustees of the people are expected at all times to act in accordance with various codes of good practice which governs ethics and good conduct. If public servants do not understand where government stands on various issues, this would obviously become even more difficult for ordinary citizens to understand their expectations and roles.

Therefore, we regard public servants to be the ambassadors of this government - in other words you are the first people who must offer clarifications and answers to the challenges which members of the community go through on a daily basis. Those of us who are mandated to guide and lead the machinery of the State have an enormous burden to ensure that our public service understands its role, and is well oiled to tackle the challenges at hand. The contract we have signed with the people, demands that we selflessly dedicate ourselves with equal zeal and enthusiasm to the task of building the kind of South Africa envisioned by our forebears, who laid the first foundation stone for a free and democratic South Africa.

This citizen's report we present here today, highlights the many achievements and efforts we continue to make, in delivering essential services to the millions of our people. It further gives us a chance to critically examine the challenges that still lie ahead of us, in our journey to become a winning nation. Thus, we should regard this day as an opportune moment for us to receive a first hand account of the steps, government has taken to enhance service delivery to communities in line with our stated Batho Pele principles. We regard it as a fundamental constitutional right of every citizen to be afforded an opportunity to participate in their own governance, hence we must emphasise the point that your responsibility in this democracy is not only limited to voting after every five years, but also goes to an extent of holding accountable, those you have elected for their actions. This is why we have always taken every opportunity available to us, to listen and to report to you whenever possible and necessary. We bear the moral and political responsibility as the African National Congress (ANC) government to ensure that our elected representatives and the provincial executive operate in a manner responsive and consistent with the needs and aspirations of all our communities.

Therefore, Batho Pele day presents an opportunity for government to provide a detailed account on what has been done, and what still needs to be done, to better the lives of all citizens of our province. The report gives an overview account of the implementation of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) projects, progress on Provincial Corridors, Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) programmes and opportunities for 2010 Fifa World Cup as well as progress on the development of the Presidential Nodes.

If we have to start off by presenting a macro-economic picture, one would say that, on average, the economy of our province grew by 4% between 1995 and 2005 - meaning that we have nominally grown from R31,7 billion in 1995 to R103,7 billion in 2005. Although the biggest investment to this growth has been in the mining sector, it is regrettable that this sector has not created the number of jobs we need, due to the capital-intensive nature of the industry. Overall, government remains the biggest employer in the province, followed by the services sector. Agriculture has been relegated to become the third largest employer due to challenges of drought and water scarcity, which we have been experiencing in the last three years. However, we have an opportunity through Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (AsgiSA) and the Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS) to invest massively in education and skills, in order to triple the size of agriculture, tourism, construction and the manufacturing sectors by 2015. The 2010 Fifa World soccer games also provide us with a rare opportunity to invest massively in infrastructure that will constantly be needed, in order to grow a developmental and a competitive economy.

To this end measures are being taken to improve the capacity of our Further Education and Training (FET) colleges as well as investing in learnerships and internship programmes, to bridge the skills gaps that the province still has. During this financial year, we are pleased that we have increased the number of bursaries awarded externally to 559, with special focus on engineering, agriculture, medical, social and health, tourism, auditing and accounting. These are the kinds of skills our economy needs in order to remain competitive globally and nationally, and to create the number of jobs necessary to fight underdevelopment and poverty. Our conviction is that our society can never develop, if we do not invest sufficiently in human capital and skills.

Programme director

Although, our Grade 12 performance has been worrisome for the past two years, government understands the scale of the problem and has initiated strategies to gradually improve performance. On top of the structural changes that has been initiated, this year for instance, we continued with saturday classes and winter enrichment classes whereby teachers who are high performing, including curriculum specialists and lecturers from higher education institutions, were deployed to help learners out. The matric pass rate is currently at 36% on Mathematics, 51% on Physical Science and 43% on Economic Science. Our aim is to increase overall performance on these subjects to 50% by 2009. We still hope that when matric results are announced late this year or early next year, our province would have faired much better compared to last year.

Programme director

In an endeavour to bring government closer to the people, our province is implementing the Community Development Worker (CDW) Programme in line with the National CDW Framework. In 2006, 376 trained Community Development Workers were deployed in all municipalities in the province in order to attend to community problems to achieve better service delivery. We are highly pleased to report that, in 2006 alone, 12 719 cases of liaison work was done and 13 308 service delivery cases were resolved through CDWs intervention. In addition, we have also seen the number of Thusong Service Centres increasing to 16 in 10 local municipalities, and there are plans in place to reach the target of one Thusong Service Centre per Local Municipality by 2014. We are further pleased that our Department of Local Government and Housing has established a Housing Consumer Call Centre (0800 Ntshebele or 0800 487 432) which is a toll-free number aimed at promoting broader interaction with communities on housing related enquiries. The department has also started an initiative called 'My Councillor and I,' an innovative, vibrant programme which is aimed at fostering good relations between Councillors and citizens. The feedback that we are getting, points to the fact that, this programme is working well and needs to be intensified in all our municipalities.

Consistent with Batho Pele principles, the province has further ensured that 95% of government buildings and service points and their offices are identifiable by all our customers and citizens as a whole. In addition to these, departments have provided their employees with nametags and in some cases, the nametags are used for access control in order to improve security. This we believe will go a long way towards ensuring that officials are identifiable by members of the public, and that service delivery institutions are easily accessible.

Programme director

One of Batho Pele's principles requires us to maintain constant and dynamic contact between government and the people it serves. In the main, government has mostly relied on such programmes as 'Exco meets the people' and various imbizo programmes which are intended to empower people in outlying areas. It is our stated intention as government to see to it that, these gatherings do not just end up as meaningless talk shows, but are instead used productively as solution driven platforms, where citizens also get solutions to some of their problems.

Programme director

One also needs to take this opportunity to highlight some of the achievements that are being registered in the field of health and social development of our province. One of these achievements relates to the routine immunisation of children under the age of five which is proceeding well as planned. It is highly encouraging that routine immunisation coverage has now reached 89% in 2006/7 and this has exceeded the National target of 80%.

In addition to these, we have also seen good progress in the management of Priority Diseases such as HIV/AIDS which are showing signs of stabilising. At-least we can be able to say, with confidence, that universal access to HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment has been increased to levels which are higher than before. For instance, in all the districts, 36 hospitals or 90% of hospitals are implementing comprehensive programme on HIV/AIDS. Eight thousand nine hundred and seven patients are treated and prevalence is at 21,5% compared to the 30,2% nationally. The Comprehensive Care, Treatment and Management Plan remains on track with treatment sites having increased from 24 to 36 in 2006/07. While the province is the lowest in the country in terms of prevalence rate, this does not mean we should be complacent. It is still important for everyone to heed the HIV and AIDS message so that we do not get infected.

We are also working hard to improve the response times of Emergency Medical Services (ambulances) to acceptable times in both rural and urban areas. We have recently procured 100 ambulances to add to our current fleet, thereby bringing the total number of ambulances in the province to 330. The Emergency Medical Services (EMS) response time in urban areas is now 27 minutes vs. the target of 20 minutes, while the response time in rural areas is 47 minutes versus the target of 40 minutes. The challenge however has been the poor state of rural roads which have been found to be inaccessible in some respects. However, we know that our Department of Roads and Transport is doing all that it can to work on this challenge.

Programme director

The safety and security of our citizens is a priority for this government. Our province has recently been declared the safest province in South Africa, according to a survey done by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIIR). However, sustaining this record would always be a challenge, which will require joint partnership between communities and the South African Police Service (SAPS). Nonetheless, we are pleased that a strategy has since been developed to guide Community Policing Forums in executing their work. The functionality of these structures has seen a reduction in crime in many parts of our province, thus ensuring community safety. However, we remain worried about the high crime prevalence rate, in provincially identified Hotspot areas such as Mankweng, Seshego, Polokwane and Thohoyandou, which have seen a resurgence of acts of highjacking, murder, housebreaking and rape. We call on communities in these areas to join hands with government and the SAPS, to round up criminals, so that our communities can remain safe and secure.

Programme director

We find it regrettable that the good work being done by this government is being tainted by few corrupt elements, within the public service which have no respect for our public resources. We believe that it is the responsibility of every public servant and members of the public to blow the whistle each time they see officials abusing resources of the state or acting in self-interest. All provincial departments have units in place that deal with cases of fraud and corruption involving members of the public service. We are pleased to report that so far we have already dealt with 39 or (36,5%) of the 107 cases reported to us through the National Anti-Corruption Hotline of which the remaining 68 or (63,5%) are still under investigation. We promise to deal firmly with those that would have been found involved in corruption or fraud. We encourage every member of the public to report corruption without fear or favour.

In order to achieve our Batho Pele goals we have further taken steps to ensure that our service standards are also incorporated into the performance management system of managers and public servants in all departments. Departments also have systems in place to address complaints about non-adherence to service standards, and the dissatisfaction with the quality of services which are provided. Members of the public are also encouraged to make use of suggestion boxes available at various government buildings and service points, as well as the use of the toll free number: 08 0000 2383. Complaint with regards to lack of service delivery by both the provincial and national departments can also be reported by way of physically visiting departments concerned and by way of writing to those departments.

While we should abhor any miscreant behaviour on the part of any public servant, we must at the same time find it easy to applaud those deserving officers or service points, which excel in their work by giving them due encouragement where the standard of service delivered is of a higher quality.

Therefore, allow me programme director, to once again, take this opportunity to congratulate and wish well the winners of the 2006 Premier Service Excellence Awards, for setting a shining example of what Batho Pele means for the people of our province. With all humility, we should all pride ourselves, with the high standards of Batho Pele and service excellence achieved by these institutions. The institutions I will recognise include the following:

Elim Hospital in the Vhembe District Department of Health and Social Development, Moshate Hotel School under the Department of Education, Lepelle Secondary School under the Department of Education, Area Social Crime prevention - SAPS Vhembe District, Waterberg Home Affairs Office, Trade and Wildlife regulation Team-under the Department of Economic development, Environment and Tourism, Mohale Primary School-under the Department of Education, Waterberg District team-Department of Agriculture, Onane Primary school under the Department of Education, Vhembe Adult Basic Education and Training (Abet) team under the Department of Education, Motupa Clinic under the Department of Health and Social Development, and lastly the Provincial Department of Agriculture for being the best provincial department in 2006.

I now invite members of the executive council and Heads of Department to make their statements of commitment.

Thank you