Mary Papayya

Mary Papayya

Hundreds of councillors from all corners of KwaZulu-Natal will gather at Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre, Durban, today to discuss ways of speeding up service delivery in the province.

The groundbreaking symposium has been organised by the department of local government and traditional affairs and is driven by MEC Michael Mabuyakhulu.

"The symposium is aimed at enabling councillors who are at the coalface of service delivery to discuss common challenges and to devise strategies to tackle these challenges in order to improve the pace of service delivery," he said.

According to the MEC the province has the highest number of municipalities in the country at 61.

"While KwaZulu-Natal is one of the leading provinces in the country when it comes to service delivery, and has to a large extent not experienced service delivery protests, the conference has been necessitated by the many challenges that hamper effective service delivery in the province," Mabuyakhulu said.

These include poor oversight by councillors and inadequate financial knowledge, he said.