MUNICIPALITIES appear reluctant to put their stretched financial resources into supporting the national government's ambitious national multi-sectoral policy framework to guide the country’s response to HIV/Aids, TB and STIs.
The SA Local Government Association (Salga) has raised concerns about the framework’s requirement to establish HIV/Aids councils in metropolitan, district and local municipalities that will need to be funded from municipal coffers and for them to sustain their functions and achieve strategic goals as well as mobilise any additional resources needed.
In terms of the policy framework, core funding should be sourced from local government to fund secretarial and council administrative costs including salaries of full-time staff, facilities, equipment, communications and the direct expenses of day-to-day work.
According to Salga, local government should not be expected to cover almost the full cost of operationalisation of a multi-sector structure in the form of HIV/Aids councils, which are independent voluntary associations accountable to the South African National Aids Council (Sanac).
”It must be acknowledged that HIV/Aids was traditionally treated as a health function and did not form part of the core functions allocated to local government in terms of the Constitution,” the association stated.
Salga also complained that the division of revenue takes into account the powers and functions assigned to each sphere of government and therefore the HIV/Aids response constitutes an unfunded mandate for municipalities, hence they are not allocating substantial budget and resources for the function.
”The assumption that municipalities can raise revenue through property rates, user charges and fees and can recover the costs of providing basic services through tariffs is becoming misplaced considering poor revenue collection and increases demand for free basic services,” the representative body of the country’s 257 municipalities stated in its response to the policy framework.
In addition, Salga has suggested that the function should be treated as an assigned function where a budget should be made available to assist local government to perform the function beyond mainstreaming and advocacy work.
It accepted that the Constitution provided for municipalities to participate in national and provincial development programmes but further imposes an obligation for local government to structure and manage its administration, budgeting and planning processes to give priority to the basic needs of the community and to promote the social and economic development of the community.
Salga added that this made it difficult to prioritise HIV/Aids programmes over provision of basic services such as sanitation, waste management, electricity and water.
Last year, the government launched the fifth national strategic plan (NSP) for HIV/Aids, TB (tuberculosis) and STIs (sexually-transmitted infections) for the period between 2023 and 2028, which was developed by the SA National Aids Council (Sanac).
Estimates put the funds required for the implementation of the NSP at about R249 billion over a period of five years, with R45bn in the first year rising to R53bn to the fifth.
According to Sanac, the government is expected to contribute 77% of total available funding over the NSP period while development partners are expected to fund around 21% and the private sector just under 3%.
The NSP proposes that its implementation must form an integral mainstay of all ministers, premiers, mayors and mayoral committee members, directors-general, heads of department and municipal managers’ performance appraisal scorecards.
Salga chief executive Sithole Mbanga has given mayors, city and municipal managers until the end of this month to submit their comments on the draft multi-sectoral policy framework to the association.