President Jacob Zuma will spend the day in Port Elizabeth monitoring the performance of the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality with regards to governance and administration.

The President runs the Siyahlola Presidential Monitoring Programme through which he assesses the performance of governance at national, provincial andlocal levels.

Last year national government began providing support to the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality to improve governance systems.

The Minister of Finance, Mr Pravin Gordhan and the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Mr Lechesa Tsenoli, met with the city municipal leadership in August last year and agreed on a set of short term support measures.

These were structured into seven work-streams, namely: (i) Institutional Arrangements, (ii) Financial Management; (iii) Capital Project Management (Infrastructure); (iv) Governance, Administration, Forensic Investigation and Internal Audit; (v) Strategic Planning, Local Economic Development and Performance Management; (vi) Security Management, and; (vii) Legal and Litigations.

The President’s visit is aimed at assessing the progress made thus far and to ascertain what else can be done to support the city to address its governance, administration and service delivery challenges in some areas such as water and electricity provision among others.

The President will meet with the provincial and local government leaders aswell as representatives of civil society including the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber. Chamber President Mr Mandla Madwara and CEO Mr Kevin Hustler met with the President in Pretoria earlier this month and emphasised the need to provide more support to the city.

The President also had a brief meeting with civil society leaders while on the election campaign trail recently, and decided that it was necessary to return and spend more time with the city leadership in both government and civil society.