Eastern Cape

Brief Profile

The SALGA EC office  is situated at the heart of the second largest province, in the East London’s suburb of Berea. Eastern Cape is located in the south-east of South Africa, bordering Free State and Lesotho in the north, KwaZulu-Natal in the north-east, the Indian Ocean along its south and south-eastern borders, and Western and Northern Cape in the west.
SALGA EC represents ,supports, advises and profiles local government  in the province. SALGA-EC is having 6 district municipalities and 38 local municipalities and one metropolitan municipality which is Nelson Mandela Bay whilst Buffalo Municipality is envisage as an upcoming Metro  in April 2011.

The Provincial Executive Officer  leads the governance issues under the guidance of  Provincial Executive Council  and also management team in fulfilling the mandate of SALGA in the Province.

Eastern Cape Highlights

The PEO's office has managed to   host 2011 Local Government Elections round table whereby all mayors and speakers of municipalities were invited in this session. Key stakeholders like Independent Electoral Commission, House of Traditional Leaders, African National Congress which is a the ruling party, Department  of Local Government, Political Analysts (Dr S. Fikeni) and Media were invited to present papers on their state of readiness for 2011 election and their expectations from SALGA beyond election. All the stakeholders showed their keen interest.

Finance and Administration

In the current financial year this unit prides itself with the filling of vacant post which is currently at 80%. Also the unit has been able to collect levies from member municipality currently the office is standing at 92%.

Municipal Infrastructure & Services

Water Services Authority workshop held on the 14 October 2010.

Topics covered are as follows:

• Funding streams
• Municipal Systems Improvement
• Grant MFMA regulations and compliance
• Water and Sanitation funding DBSA support to Local government

Integrated Environmental and Climate Change workshop was held in East London on the 19-20 October 2010 in collaboration with DEA.

On the 03 November 2010 SALGA Eastern Cape in collaboration with SABITA convened a capacity building workshop on Roads Maintenance in East London:

• Introduction to the Southern Africa Bitumen Association (SABITA)
• Effective and efficient road system
• Appropriate technologies for road maintenance
• Appropriate Private Sector Involvement in Urban Road Maintenance And Repair
• The mechanisms of road failures, maintenance and rehabilitation options and the importance of road maintenance

Economic Development & Planning Directorate

• Hosted the LED Maturity assessment workshop which provides a practical way for municipalities or development organisations state of maturity in terms of LED good practice to be assessed. The workshop highlighted key benefits of the assessment which are the following:
  • Creating an awareness of flaws in LED approaches that could otherwise take years to recognize
  • Creating an awareness of gaps in know-how and opportunities to learn
  • Identify cases of good practice to use as examples for others to learn from
  • Informing LED capacity development programmes
  • Monitoring growth in LED maturity over successive years
  • Creating an awareness of relative strengths and weaknesses of LED at various municipalities
• Hosted an LED Roundtable, the key focus areas of the event were on information sharing on successes and failures of LED activities in the Province, co-ordination of LED initiatives within the Province in order to improve LED network and achieve the LED mandate as per the LED Framework and SALGA LED position paper on LED.