Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 2:26PM The South African Local Government Association will be hosting the 2010 Human Resource Management Policy Conference to debate and find resolutions on the repositioning of Municipal Human Resources from 6-8 September 2010.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 2:24PM Members of the iLGM forum on LinkedIn will be pleased to note that the forum is growing at a rapid pace. We now have 54 members in the group and some interesting and informative discussions are emerging.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 2:19PM Msunduzi municipality recently announced that it only had R4.8-million in the bank, while it needed R200-million a month to function properly, leaving the municipality only enough money to operate for three days.
Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:47PM Ekurhuleni Metro issued its maiden bond for R815-million last week following the trends of Johannesburg and Cape Town. Johannesburg issued its first bond in 2004 and has since issued several bonds totalling approximately R7.7-billion, while Cape Town entered the market in 2008 and has since issued three bonds totalling R4.2-billion.
Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:45PM Scores of people arrived at East London's Absa Stadium where President Jacob Zuma addressed the national Women's Day event.
Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:35PM In an effort to stop cadres from holding senior municipal management jobs, President Jacob Zuma wants to amend the Municipal Systems Act, this according to a leading newspaper.
Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:28PM Mossel Bay Municipality invites young people between 18 – 35 years old to apply for basic computer training. 20 young people will be chosen. The Municipality will cover all costs of the computer training process.
Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:24PM The Gauteng provincial government is consulting with all its municipalities to develop what it called "minimum service standards" which will apply throughout the province. Premier Nomvula Mokonyane says the aim of the new approach, scheduled to begin in September, was to speed up service delivery in the country's economic capital.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 1:33PM MEMORANDUM TO MEMBERS OF THE iLGM
A few matters:
Competency Guidelines for Municipal Managers and Managers reporting to Municipal Managers.
Government historically published by gazette (2007) a document outlining the desired competencies of Section 57 managers. This document was the subject of a meeting at the iLGM secretariat yesterday, attended by representatives of several other institutional stakeholders. The consensus was that the document is seriously flawed in that it seems to require the same skills levels for all sizes of municipalities, and over emphasizing financial skills and under emphasizing technical skills. The document is in a format that makes it very difficult for stakeholders to intelligently comment on it. Fearing that the document will become law once the current amendments to the Systems Act go through parliament, it was agreed to alert the COGTA minister of the status of the document, and to solicit support for restructuring the document into a matrix format so that skills gaps can be identified. It was also deemed important to obtain positive signoff from the various municipal associations and professional institutions involved.
Conference Arrangements
Members are again reminded of the annual iLGM conference that will be held in Rustenburg this year. Paperwork can be found on our website www.ilgm.co.za. We are also planning towards a “Women in Local Government” conference for early next year. Already one council has shown interest in hosting the event.
Provincial Branch Events
We will be having a meeting of members on 6 September 2010 in Queenstown. The intention is to again elect a provincial committee and get regular members meetings going. Local Government Executives have much to talk about and these structures are there to be used. Northern Cape, Free State and North West are all in need of some re-organising. Volunteers have came forward in the North West and I hope to announce a meeting there later in the month.
I noticed that the branch life of various municipal associations is doing exceptionally well. All it takes, in my view, is one livewire volunteer organiser per province to make this happen!!
General Direction of iLGM
Over the past year many members and NEC members have suggested services that the iLGM can provide to members. In most cases we were able to do market trials for the proposals and invariably we have come to the conclusion that members require only certain services from iLGM but for other types of products members prefer to use specialised service providers. For instance, only one person used our legal help line in six months. Smaller speciality events featuring invited guests attracted many non members but one is lucky if any members turned up at all. Likewise we have had no interest in mentoring services or interim managers.
Our forte seems to be in three areas –
The NEC received calls from various parts of the country indicating that Section 57 managers do need more institutional support for their personal legal and employment arrangements. It is not sure what can be done in this regard and good suggestions will be welcome.
Kind regards
Jean Venter
iLGM: Executive Officer
Friday, July 23, 2010 at 3:47PM Dear iLGM Member
I am delighted to provide you with conference programme details our Annual Conference, which takes place on 12-14 October in Cardiff. (Please click here for the conference programme)
The theme of the conference is 'Weather the Storm' where we will be providing you with insight and practical help to manage in these challenging times. As well as hearing from an excellent line up of speakers, we provide the best opportunity in the local government calendar to meet with colleagues to share and solve problems.
Key speakers include David Blanchflower, Ben Page and Steve McCauley. There will be also be an opportunity to engage with a minister from the coalition government (though they are not in a position to tell us which one yet).
The conference will also feature a range of workshops, study tours and social events as well as (optional) Masterclasses giving you ideas, action and support to take to the day job.
Detailed timings will be posted on our website in the next week or two, but in the meantime, if you have not already booked to attend the conference, I urge you to do so now, as places are limited – for details and a booking facility click here www.solaceconference.org.uk
Regards,
David Clark
Director-General