Service delivery and service payment at Emfuleni local municipality

Abstract

The apartheid legacy left most of the South African municipalities with lot of challenges to address. Among the challenges that were left over by the apartheid legacy in the South African municipalities was poor service delivery. After the thorough analysis by the researcher attempting to fmd out the reasons for poor service delivery in the South African municipalities it was found that non-payment of municipal services by the residents has got a contributing factor on service delivery. The post-1994 era saw municipalities being given more autonomy by the legislation as a third sphere of government, given such autonomy by the legislation saw the municipalities given more developmental role to play in their localities. The South African legislation has proposed various strategies to ensure that development effectively takes place in the country; strategies such as Local Economic Development, Integrated Development Planning and Indigent Policy were proposed by the legislation as the vehicles to make development run smooth in the municipalities. Practically in very few municipalities in the country such strategies have proved success, Emfuleni Local Municipality during the initiation of the study was the municipality identified where such strategies have never proved successful. Due to various factors one of the most important, being the financial and time constraints the study was narrowed to Emfuleni Local Municipality. Even though the findings of this study are reflecting the scenario at Emfuleni Local Municipality, it is an undeniable fact that, this is the scenario in most municipalities in the country. Upon conclusions, some recommendations are given by the researcher how municipalities in South Africa could deal with the problem of poor service delivery and poor payment of services by residents in municipalities.