The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Dr Zweli Mkhize will brief media on Thursday, 13 December 2018 on the work of CoGTA this year.

With 2018 drawing to a close, Minister Mkhize will outline the progress made by CoGTA since the beginning of the year, especially as it relates to key programmes. These programmes include the work being done through the Inter-Ministerial Task Teams on the Eskom and Water Boards debts. This work has seen efforts to ensure that Municipalities are able to service their bulk accounts to avoid unacceptable debts which prejudices communities who are paying for their services.

The other key area is the turning around of distressed Municipalities to ensure that they are able to provide the much needed services to communities. Through this programme, Minister Mkhize visited a number of Provinces to discuss collaboration mechanisms on key projects and strengthening partnerships to implement programmes like the Municipal Recovery Programme (MRP).

The deployment of technical teams to Municipalities with challenges is of importance as they are able to assist them with infrastructure building and maintenance.

In addition, the Minister will also share progress being made in building the institution of Traditional Leadership and a Programme on the Promotion and Protection of Human rights within communities. The challenges that has seen many young men losing their lives prematurely in initiation schools will also be mentioned by the Minister within the context of the approved Bill that will give government more power to hold perpetrators of such atrocities to account. Part of this work included extensive stakeholder engagement process and consultation linking role players in all the sectors.

The Minister will further outline the future plans and continuing work to stabilise the local government sector, whilst also turning around distressed Municipalities.

The members of the media are invited as follows to the briefing by Minister Mkhize:

Date: 13 December 2018

Time: 10:00

Venue: S37 - CoGTA Head office - 87 Hamilton Street.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Republic of South Africa: Department of Government Communication and Information.