Picture: North West MEC COGHSTA, Oageng Molapisi/Supplied
By OBAKENG MAJE
7 October 2024- The North West MEC for Cooperative Governance, Human Settlement and Traditional Affairs (COGHSTA), Oageng Molapisi said the Presidential District Development Model (PDDM) programme, remains key in delivering services to the province.
Molapisi who delivered keynote address during his departmental strategic planning session in Rustenburg recently said, coordination of services among departments and other spheres of government is critical and most services require more integration from the beginning until the end.
He further said provision of services such as water, sewer, houses and many other, which remain a serious challenge to communities are priorities. Molapisi added that the DDM is the most viable tool at their disposal to address some of the challenges that they deemed as shortcomings within human settlement.
“We must work closely with provincial government departments, districts and local municipalities, to address issues such as poor maintenance of infrastructure and inadequate bulk, poor implementation and limited community engagements and population growth, which leads to the mushrooming of informal settlements.
“However, working together will lead to increase in us fulfilling our mandate of providing habitable human settlements for the people of the North West. I would like to acknowledge my departmental performance during the 6th administration and I remain hopeful that we will emerge victorious under this capable team,” he said.
According to Molapisi, assessing the work done in the previous five years, he is convinced that there is determination from all employees within his department. He said this will assist them to realise the vision and mission of his department.
“The current conjecture (GNU), places the department at the epicentre of ensuring that we lead to improved living conditions through the provision of integrated sustainable human settlement in the province.
“We are therefore all required to place our skills and expertise to realise this objective. Some areas require our immediate intervention. However, I am disappointed about the state of infrastructure in the province, especially blocked projects,” said Molapisi.
He said the recent report by the visiting National Council of Province (NCOP), should be corrected before November 2024. Molapisi said the committee expressed disappointment at incomplete projects and further called on the department to remedy the situation and deliver habitable homes to deserving beneficiaries.
“We also focused on other key departmental service delivery programmes such as the progress recorded in areas like Deelpan village, which was hit by two devastating floods in the past two years.
“We looked into developments in Moretele and the upcoming ministerial visit to the province in the next two weeks. I am happy that managers remained confident that the department will achieve its mandate, despite cut in budget.
The Guardian 