The KwaZulu-Natal provincial government has conducted skills audits of more than 4,000 municipal officials with a view to rooting out incompetent staff and those who gave them jobs.

This was announced by KZN premier Sihle Zikalala at the state of the province address (Sopa) on Wednesday.

Last year, Zikalala said he would remove all officials found to be incompetent, along with those who appointed them, after conducting a skills audit of all public servants in the province.

“We committed to undertake a skills audit for all senior managers in the provincial and local government. As part of this, Cogta has conducted skills audits in nine municipalities, covering 4,144 officials,” he said.

The assessment would continue to all outstanding municipalities, he said.

Zikalala announced that a skills audit for provincial departments and entities would start in the next six months.

During his term of office, Zikalala committed to pay attention to all municipalities.

“From this commitment, through Cogta, we conducted an assessment of the performance of all municipalities in the province and we consolidated strategic intervention plans per district.”

He said these plans were implemented in all municipalities and each municipality was accounting directly to the MEC for Cogta.

A premier's co-ordinating forum, aimed at assessing progress, would meet quarterly to review progress.

“Having consolidated at the provincial level, our political attention is now focused on the local sphere of government, because of serious challenges there and because that is where the impact of our policies and programmes are mostly felt,” he added.

Zikalala said the provincial government had made progress in monitoring and enforcing professional and ethical services in the public sector through the programme.