Civil Engineering October 2021 | Vol 29 No 9

Le t ter from the ed i tor S outh Africa’s Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan calls for “aggressive infrastructure investment” as one of the interventions to restore the economy. SIDSSA, organ- ised annually by the Investment and Infrastructure Office within The Presidency, supports this drive. Through SIDSSA, government is working to institutionalise the SIDS methodology as a new way of packaging and preparing projects for funding. This methodology relates to the identifica- tion, consideration, evaluation, approval, and implementation of workable infrastructure, in order to ensure bankability. It also focuses on three pathways for project funding: commercial funding, blended financing and fiscal allocation. The aim is to ensure that infrastructure development is not merely undertaken in a transactional manner. According to De Lille, good progress has been made on the 62 projects that were pitched at the inaugural SIDSSA held in June 2020, and which follow the SIDS methodology. R340 billion in funding commitments was secured from the private sector for these 62 projects which were gazetted as Strategic Integrated Projects (SIPs) to ensure that they are streamlined and expedited for prioritised implementation. It is encouraging to see that many of the projects have broken ground. For example, under SIP 25 several bridges have already been handed over, with several more under construction. The R20 billion investment in the N3 National Road upgrade is cur- rently being implemented in KwaZulu Natal under SIP 21, and in the Western Cape repair and refurbishment is currently being implemented at 13 proclaimed fishing harbours under SIP 21. Building on these SIPs, the 55 new projects presented to market this month are from various sectors, valued at around R595 billion, with a funding gap of around R441 billion. Collectively, the estimated employment opportunities from these projects amount to over 538 500. Local government responsibility While it is encouraging to see the progress being made and the emphasis being placed on the proper implementation of these large-scale infrastructure projects, they are largely being implemented at national government level. What is not being addressed is the role of municipalities as the custodians of a large portion of our country’s infrastructure, both in terms of delivery and maintenance. The upcoming local government elections have placed a spot- light on municipalities’ ability to deliver on their mandates. In a recent Research Note, the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) stated that progress in providing more households with access to basic services is slow and access is often characterised by supply interruptions or poor quality. In addition, household perceptions about the quality of service that they receive are substantially lower in local municipalities than in metros. While not all municipalities face the same challenges or have the same sources of revenue, BER identified a number of cross- cutting problems that inhibit basic service delivery. The first is a supply chain management process which debilitates fast and ef- fective service delivery. Inefficiencies in the procurement process remain a concern and are aggravated by the fact that decision- making power often lies with managers and staff who do not have the technical insight and competencies to ensure the right outcomes. The second is an auditing environment that focuses more strongly on audit outcomes than on municipal performance. Lastly, high vacancy rates and a history of cadre deployment have resulted in a dearth of skills. Together these problems result in, among others, over- spending of operational budgets, low levels of capital spending, insufficient spending on repairs and maintenance, excessive spending on contracted services, and high levels of fruitless, wasteful and irregular expenditure. This agrees with finding by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) in 2018 that 87 out of 257 municipalities were either dysfunctional or in financial distress, while a significant number were at risk of dysfunction- ality to varying degrees. Only 7% were considered to be well- functioning and only 55 out of the 257 had qualified engineers to assist in infrastructure projects. While the implementation of the SIPS may be an important step towards economic recovery and job creation, it is our municipalities that are at the coalface of service delivery. It is therefore vital that we see greater efforts from national and provincial government to support and capacitate municipalities if we are to see a turnaround in the delivery of services and local economic development. If not, it is South Africans who will continue to pay a heavy price for a dysfunctional local government. Danielle Petterson Editor: Civil Engineering danielle@saice.org.za A heavy price On 7 October 2021, at the Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium South Africa (SIDSSA) 2021, Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Patricia de Lille unveiled a second round of 55 projects that require funding. Civil Engineering October 2021 9