GEOFF TOOLEY | Metro lacks full engineering staff complement but small team has done wonders

There have been numerous comments on social media recently related to the water supply issues in Nelson Mandela Bay municipality. Some of these raise capacity concerns related to the municipality.

As the Institute of Municipal Engineering of Southern Africa, we can confirm that NMBM currently has only one professional engineer, 14 professional engineering technologists and two professional engineering technicians, supported by five engineers and about 50 technologists and/or technicians.

This team has done some amazing work with the limited resources available to them, and it is important to recognise and support this efficient team during these challenging times.

However, the numbers are too small to support and maintain all the infrastructure in NMBM and the call to appoint engineers is supported.

The Municipal Staff Regulations (MSR) in South Africa, issued by the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta), under the authority of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act, 2000, were formally introduced in 2021 to professionalise local government and standardise human resource practices across municipalities.

Through these regulations, Cogta calls for a ratio of three technical service delivery staff members (engineers, planners, artisans) for every one support staff member (HR, finance, SCM, audit).

I do not believe that there is a single municipality in the country that meets this requirement. Some of the better run municipalities sit at a 1 to 1 ratio at present.

When service delivery does not meet the required standard, the comments tend to paint all municipal employees with the same brush.

The competency of the technical staff is brought into question without the understanding of the good work that is being done by a limited number of efficient staff under trying conditions.

This has a demoralising impact on the technical staff who are doing good work.

It is important that the community and the politicians understand the actual ratio of technical to support staff within the municipality where they reside and the technical competency that does exist within their municipality.

It is also important that municipalities and all political parties work to rectify the imbalance and work towards the Cogta-defined ratio as this will turn the tide in service delivery.

Government is busy rewriting the local government white paper with a view to improving professionalism within our municipalities, along with service delivery.

The concern is the number of engineers with municipal experience who are involved in the rewriting process.

There is an understanding that the system needs to be fixed, but the very engineers and technologists who can best guide this process are not included.

There appear to be mostly “support” people rewriting the white paper. This is the same as the team that wrote the original white paper in 1998.

Einstein said that “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”.

We need to hear the municipal engineer’s voice in the development of legislation and solutions for our municipal infrastructure woes.

So back to NMBM. There has been some amazing work by the engineering personnel of NMBM in relation to water conservation and management.

This work was presented by Matthew Hills, an NMBM engineer, at the 2024 Imesa conference and it won best paper at the conference.

It is titled “A Practical and Proven Guide to Municipal Water Telemetry-SCADA Systems” and can be downloaded from the Imesa website.

It is a practical example of ingenuity at work to create a world-class system designed to improve water security in NMBM. It has been a source of inspiration for other municipalities around the country.

This work has improved water supply in NMBM.

This current team has guided NMBM through one of the worst droughts.

So, it is imperative that we support the pockets of excellence that exist in NMBM and help them to grow in numbers and support their dedication and ingenuity.

This support can be through ensuring that NMBM adheres to the requirements of Cogta and the Municipal Staff Regulations; it can be through ensuring that the professionals have a voice and are heard at the highest levels of the municipality; and it can be through the recognition of the pockets of excellence that do exist.

These engineers and technologists, along with all the artisans and other service delivery staff, need the recognition and support if you want infrastructure to work in our cities.

• Geoff Tooley is the president of the Institute of Municipal Engineering of Southern Africa (Imesa) and a professional civil engineer with more than three decades of experience in infrastructure engineering