South Africa is well on the way to meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi said on Monday.
He was addressing the public-private partnership round-table conference in Johannesburg on what the public and private sector can do to redress current backlogs in service delivery and infrastructure provision.
”As a country, we have set ourselves a target that is even more ambitious than the global one”, Mufamadi said.
While Africa is reportedly in danger of failing to achieve the MDG of reducing levels of poverty by half by 2015, ”extrapolating from current trends, our country is was well on the way to meeting the UN MDGs.”
He stated the government had said by the end of 2007 no household will be using the bucket sanitation system. All communities will have access to clean potable water by 2008, and access to electricity by 2012.
He said President Thabo Mbeki stated during his recent State of the Nation address that the government has surpassed its target with regards to providing people with basic water.
There has been an improvement to the percentage of the population with access to clean, drinkable water from 59% to 85%, he said.
Municipalities — the sphere of government most directly responsible for service delivery — have been assisted by public-private partnerships to augment their technical, financial, planning and project-management skills.
He said the collective effort has resulted in government having more money to spend on services such as education, health, policing, water and sanitation and energy, as well as infrastructure provision.
Project Consolidate — an effort to promote the efficient allocation of public resources and services of municipalities — had resulted in 98% of the municipalities adopting their integrated development plans by November 2006.
The thrust of the intervention is directed at towards augmenting and building resident municipal capacity for service delivery and to create conditions for sustainable, local economic development. — Sapa