There is a need to find innovative strategies to raise external funding for infrastructure development, particularly for local municipalities across Gauteng, to ensure they are able to sustain infrastructure service delivery to communities.

While there have been innovative ways around sourcing funding to resolve infrastructure challenges, financial constraints remain a challenge for infrastructure maintenance and operation on existing municipal infrastructure assets, said Gauteng Finance MEC Jacob Mamabolo.

Infrastructure development, which government mostly funds, is central to South Africa’s Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan.

“Government and stakeholders, such as Imesa, must engage to come up with ways to see how we can address this challenge,” he told delegates at the eighty-fifth Conference of the Institute of Municipal Engineering of Southern Africa (Imesa).

“When you look at the capital budget envelopes of our municipalities in Gauteng purely from the budgeting perspective, you can realise that there is a strong fiscal base to leverage from as a collective.

“The question becomes how best we can pull together from a balance sheet’s perspective the financial and economic opportunity that these resources present to us for the benefit of citizens,” he continued.

In the current financial year, the combined capital budget of Gauteng municipalities is R15.4-billion. Metropolitans, namely the cities of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane, account for the largest share of this budget.

“We would like to collaborate with Imesa and partner with professional bodies to see how we can work together to improve the municipal infrastructure situation with a key focus on Infrastructure Municipal Budget design, proactive management of Infrastructure Master Plans,” Mamabolo said.

Meanwhile, he raised concern about how the engineering professional bodies conducted their work and requested the conference to find solutions.

“We are deeply concerned as government about the role of professional service providers or engineering consulting firms for poor delivery of infrastructure,” he said, highlighting poor work quality, as well as incomplete and abandoned projects and, in some cases, cost escalations that could not be justified and timelines that were not adhered to.

“As government, we intrust you in our delivery models to be our eyes and ears, to act on our behalf, and to ensure that contractors delivery work with oversight and guidance from the sector.”

He requested that the engineering sector deliberate on these concerns, help government and find solutions.

“We need partnerships with yourselves, give us feedback and we need your skills to grow this country’s economy,” he says.

Another key challenge is the lack of skills within municipalities.

“Many municipalities do not have suitably qualified or trained people in key positions to tackle challenges in municipalities, which is as a result of poor planning and budget allocation. A concerted effort is required to attract skills and apply them, which will effectively put municipalities on a stronger technical footing,” Mamabolo concluded.