Engineer shortage adds to tension

Pretoria - It is essential for government to turn local authorities around and attract civil engineers back before next year's municipal elections.

One of the most important and biggest challenges in the turnaround strategy is to restore public confidence in the local authorities.

This is according to Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs director-general Elroy Africa at an international conference held by the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (Saice) on Tuesday.

Africa said government had drawn up a 10-point plan in this regard, and it needed to be implemented without delay.

The plan aims, inter alia, to eradicate corruption and fraud within local authorities.

According to Africa one of the reasons for poor service delivery is the fact that infrastructure has not been maintained, as a great many civil engineers have left the local authorities during the past 16 years.

What is more, only about 60% of all South Africans have access to all four basic services (water, sanitation, electricity and refuse removal).

He pointed out that, before 1994, for every 100 000 people there had been an average of 20 civil engineers working for municipalities.

After 2005 the number had declined to 2.8 per 100 000.

It's a huge problem for government that so many senior local authority managers are currently on suspension or have been fired. Ethical behaviour needs to be brought back to local authorities.

Godfrey Ramalisa from the organisation Consulting Engineers of South Africa (Cesa) warned government that it needed to implement the turnaround strategy quickly, or the country would become ungovernable.

- Sake24.com

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