Skills development plan as a tool for enhancing performance in local government, with specific reference to Greater Letaba Local Municipality

Abstract

This study focuses on Skills Development Plan as a tool for enhancing performance in local government. The focus area is the Greater-Letaba Local Municipality. Lack of skills is one of the factors identified as being responsible for poor performance in many municipalities in South Africa in the Auditor-General of South Africa’s report of 2019. According to this report, evidence of poor performance of most municipalities is largely due to poor service delivery and infrastructure backlogs. The Skills Development Plan is a tool which was developed to enhance performance in service delivery and infrastructure development. Effective service delivery and infrastructure development will improve the quality of life of all South Africans, especially the poor. This study followed the mixed methods, in which both quantitative and qualitative research approaches were used. The mixed method was used to investigate the Skills Development Plan as a tool for enhancing performance in local government, with specific reference to the Greater-Letaba Local Municipality. Quantitative research methodology was used in this study because it enabled the researcher to quantify the problem by way of generating numerical data to be transformed into usable statistics. Qualitative research methodology was used because it covered issues in great depth and detail, and it allowed the researcher to interact with the research subjects. The researcher used the contextual and descriptive design for the study, while the sampling of respondents was done through non-probability sampling, under which the sub-type, purposive or judgmental sampling was used to collect the data. Purposive sampling was chosen because the researcher wanted to use her judgement to select a sample that is most useful to the purposes of the research. Two instruments; namely, questionnaires and interviews were used to collect the data. The reason for selecting structured questionnaires and open-ended interview schedule is that the researcher wanted to collect the primary data to obtain relevant information about the study. The researcher used descriptive statistics and thematic analysis for data analysis. Finally, the researcher adhered to the research ethics. The Major findings of the research study are: The study findings discovered that majority of the respondents at ninety (90) constituting 90% responded that skills development plan leads to an improvement in employee performance, which in turn improves services offered to municipal residents. The findings revealed that the majority of the respondents, 88 who constitute 88% indicated that skills development programmes are properly coordinated. It was found that the majority of respondents, 80 who constitute 80% affirm that municipal officials are encouraged to attend skills development programmes. The findings attest that the skills development plan play a role in filling the skills gap, training and developing the municipal officials’ scarce skills according to the plan and also in terms of career development for the municipal officials to perform work better. The study v found that budget constraints, time and poor skills audit are the challenges of implementing the skills development plan at the Greater-Letaba Local Municipality. The recommendations of the research study are as follows: The researcher recommends that the municipality should identify municipal officials who at all categories are struggling to operate and maintain their services standard and infrastructure in a cost-effective and sustainable manner and train them. The researcher recommends that the skills development programmes will be properly coordinated when municipal actors collaborate to achieve skills development goals and consequently ensure that the skills development programmes are linked to the organisational objectives. The researcher recommends that there is a need for mentorship in the municipality as a means of encouraging municipal officials to attend skills development programmes with the intention of supports in improving the welfare of communities. The researcher recommends that training of administrative and political component, technical staff and managers in both “hard” technical skills, as well as “soft” skills development including supervision, leadership, organising, coordination, monitoring and control are further required. The researcher recommends that the municipality should overcome the capacity challenges and manage unsatisfactory performance in several ways such as achieving targets on a regular basis with limited time, money and human resources who are not allowed to work every day to comply with the COVID-19 regulations.