18 November 2024
MEDIA STATEMENT
TO: ALL JOURNALISTS
Friday, 15 November 2024
MISA CEO PARTICIPATES IN THE INAUGURAL UCT PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE HACKATHON
The hackathon was attended by senior executives and decision-makers in government, public infrastructure space, financiers, bulk water utilities, engineering consultants and UCT’s civil engineering final-year students to explore critical challenges facing the delivery of infrastructure aligned with their mandate. Academics from various research groups were also in attendance and presented their research interests aimed at solving some of the challenges in the public infrastructure.
Delivering her presentation, focusing on the “Impediments to effective infrastructure delivery”, Ms. Kgomo, painted a picture of the challenges facing the local government in relation to governance, finances and service delivery.
She emphasized that one of the glaring challenges that impedes service delivery is the debt owed by municipalities to ESKOM, Water Boards, Auditor- General, Department of Water and Sanitation and others which threatens the financial and economic viability of municipalities. Poor spatial planning was also noted as another challenge.
She drew focus on how MISA responds to the impediments affecting local government by demonstrating how MISA partners with key stakeholders in the water sector. MISA also ensures that technical support programmes create efficiencies in the value chain of infrastructure delivery.
Lastly, she explained how MISA builds a technical skills pipeline for local government through youth programmes such as Apprenticeship, and Experiential Learnership, Young Graduate Programme, Technical Bursaries. She encouraged the students in the room to take advantage of these programmes in order to enable them to play a critical role in improving the state of local government in our country.
Independent scorecards on public infrastructure have shown a concerning trend of local government infrastructure that is in a state of decay. National roads under SANRAL are ranked D by the SAICE scorecard while municipal roads are ranked F. Bulk infrastructure under the Department of Water and Sanitation is in a better condition than reticulation networks under district and local municipalities.
Researchers in water and wastewater treatment, transportation engineering, hydrology, structural engineering geotechnical engineering, urban and public infrastructure and Future Water, a multidisciplinary research institute focusing on water research presented their research and measures intended to align new research areas to the pressing needs.
This hackathon is necessary for realigning research topics to the pressing challenges facing South Africa today. It is a direct exchange between decision-makers and scholars to steer the built environment into an evidence-based, data-driven vehicle.
For media inquiries, kindly contact:
Ms. Siduduziwe Hlatshwayo: 0822291604
End
Issued by the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA)