Background: Property, plant and equipment (PPE) represent a significant portion of the asset base of any municipality and thus a municipality has a moral and legislative duty to safeguard these assets against damage and/or wilful neglect.Aim: This article explored how infrastructure management within the City of Ekurhuleni (COE), Gauteng province in the Republic of South Africa, can assist in the provision of sustainable services and how the city’s infrastructure can contribute to social and economic development of its communities. This article endeavours to indicate how the COE manages its infrastructure in terms of three service delivery departments as a sample of the entire municipality. This article focuses on the improvement of infrastructure management in general and at the COE, in particular. It further aims to indicate how service departments can go about in employing asset-management guidelines whilst improving governance strategies.Methods: This study followed a mixed-method approach and the system’s theory served as the research methodology. The study covered a 5-year period from 2014/2015 to 2018/2019 financial years and employed benchmarking ratios and calculations to indicate how best the city can improve its management of infrastructure, and measure its performance against those of equally sized metropolitan municipalities.Results: The findings of the study reveal that even though the city is doing well in terms of certain aspects of service delivery, there still remain many issues regarding the management of infrastructure that impede its ability to provide sustainable services that can ultimately lead to economic growth and development.Conclusion: Recommendations to the city include the upskilling of especially the senior management in terms of the critical role they play in maintaining the city’s infrastructure assets. Another recommendation is that politicians do not only think in terms of adding to the city’s current infrastructure whilst not attending to the maintenance of existing assets and most critically, the city does not follow an integrated approach in terms of the comprehensive infrastructure programme.
This article explored how infrastructure management within the City of Ekurhuleni (COE), Gauteng province in the Republic of South Africa, can assist in the provision of sustainable services and how the city's infrastructure can contribute to social and economic development of its communities. This article endeavours to indicate how the COE manages its infrastructure in terms of three service delivery departments as a sample of the entire municipality. This article focuses on the improvement of infrastructure management in general and at the COE, in particular. It further aims to indicate how service departments can go about in employing asset-management guidelines whilst improving governance strategies.Methods: This study followed a mixed-method approach and the system's theory served as the research methodology. The study covered a 5-year period from 2014/2015 to 2018/2019 financial years and employed benchmarking ratios and calculations to indicate how best the city can improve its management of infrastructure, and measure its performance against those of equally sized metropolitan municipalities. Results:The findings of the study reveal that even though the city is doing well in terms of certain aspects of service delivery, there still remain many issues regarding the management of infrastructure that impede its ability to provide sustainable services that can ultimately lead to economic growth and development. Conclusion:Recommendations to the city include the upskilling of especially the senior management in terms of the critical role they play in maintaining the city's infrastructure assets. Another recommendation is that politicians do not only think in terms of adding to the city's current infrastructure whilst not attending to the maintenance of existing assets and most critically, the city does not follow an integrated approach in terms of the comprehensive infrastructure programme.
This study aimed to analyse how democratic and accountable governance can assist in creating sustainable processes of involvement of its communities. Local government is government's main contributor to the socio-economic growth and development, not only of a country but more so, its people. The article emphasises improvement in the current processes of community involvement in strategic planning and the execution of such plans in general and at the city of Ekurhuleni (COE) in particular, situated in the Gauteng province of South Africa. It further aims to indicate to the city that its processes are not taking into account communities' feelings of self-worth, humanity and identity. Methods:The study followed a qualitative approach in terms of the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and the network governance theory served as the theoretical framework. Results:The findings indicate that communities and community bodies who are to serve as actors in collaboration with the city in their planning and execution processes experience alienation from council, councillors and even ward committees and their members. Community actors are of the opinion that councillors only know them during their election campaigns, and when elections have come and gone, councillors are gone as well. Conclusion:Recommendations include that when dealing with community affairs there should be no political party affiliation and that councillors must know that communication is a two-way tool that should benefit all parties. Councillors are to commit themselves to the improvement of community members' lives and socio-economic upliftment.
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