COGTA committee urges SALGA to do more about the poor quality of councillors

CAPE TOWN - Parliament's Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) portfolio committee wants the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) to do more about the poor quality of councillors.

SALGA briefed the committee on Friday about its annual report. 

The association received another clean audit. 

However, committee chairperson Zweli Mkhize said while they welcome good audits, a lot more needs to be done when it comes to the quality of councillors. 

"The issue of the quality of councillors or the capacity of the councillors has come out as a big issue which does also require SALGA to focus on."

He said political parties could also do more when it comes to the councillor selection process.  

"We need to be influencing communities to say at least bring us people who can operate at this level of academic level so that effectiveness can be improved."

SALGA told the committee that over 4,500 councillors had been put through training on several programmes which benefitted 202 municipalities. 

It said it managed to raise R38 million from training authorities and the Sector Education and Training Authority [SETA] to train more councillors.