Durban — The City of uMhlathuze walked away with four awards at the 2022 KwaZulu-Natal Municipal Excellence Awards.
The awards were held at the Greyville Convention Centre on Tuesday night under the theme “Towards service delivery excellence in KZN municipalities”.
City of uMhlathuze mayor Xolani Ngwezi said their dedication to service delivery, transparency and hard work were some of the reasons that contributed to their municipality winning the majority of the awards.
The City of uMhlathuze scooped four big awards at the glamorous awards ceremony. UMhlathuze won a gold trophy and a certificate in Clean Audit Opinions for the 2020/2021 financial year; the award means that uMhlathuze achieved a clean audit, which means that:
• It complied with the important legislation that applied to it, and wrongdoings were rare or they were easily fixed if they occurred.
• Its financial statements and performance reports gave a transparent and credible account of its finances and its performance against the targets that had been set. In other words, these accountability reports present a reliable picture of the municipality’s performance.
The City of uMhlathuze also won a gold trophy and R500 000 prize for the allocation and spend in the Repairs and Maintenance category.
UMhlathuze closed off with the gold trophy and a certificate for best developed Integrated Development Plan, for which it got first place.
Ngwezi challenged all City of uMhlathuze staff, officials and public officials to not stop working hard as they had seen that their hard work was paying off.
He advised them to be motivated by the winnings.
“I encourage the servers of the City of uMhlathuze to work even harder to service the people of uMhlathuze with diligence, to maintain a high standard of service delivery and a clean record of financial management at all times,” said Ngwezi.
KZN Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Sihle Zikalala said these awards must be remembered as a way in which the sector had succeeded in raising the profile of local government.
Speaking on this, he said they could only do this by fostering trust and creating a better image and more informed understanding of the local government sector.
“We intend to focus on what is working and identifying those municipalities that are leading by example. It is an opportunity to celebrate good practice and excellence among your peers so that we can all learn from one another.”
Daily News