Minister of Monitoring and Evaluation, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, says steady progress is being made to bring the North West province back to stability.

This comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed an Inter-Ministerial Task Team (IMTT) to conduct a governance and service delivery assessment in the province in response to widespread community uprisings and labour unrest that affected service delivery.

Resource availability and payments

Commenting on the situation in the province Dlamini-Zuma says progress is being made but a lot more still needs to be done. “Resources were not moving out to clinics.

“The distribution of medicines and drugs was affected because there was a problem at the depot, and that has now been resolved. We are now at 80% availability in terms of medicines,” she explains.

Turing to payment of service providers, which had fallen behind as a result of protests, now stands at 80% Dalmini-Zuma notes.

“We have made progress with 80% of payments of service providers, which was close to R1 billion,” the minister says.

Corruption under the spotlight

With corruption being cited as one of the challenges in the province, Dlamini-Zuma said 46 cases have been handed over to the police for further investigation.

During the intervention, 12 municipalities that required assistance were identified.

With municipalities being the most affected by poor management, the Minister says the IMTT is at work to put mechanisms in place to ensure that governance in these municipalities is addressed.