Breaking News: Blouberg Municipality Receives Prestigious Good Governance Award!

The Blouberg Local Municipality was honored with a Good Governance Award by Good Governance Africa during its 10th Anniversary event in Johannesburg on October 2, 2024. Mayor Maria Thamaga welcomed the recognition, attributing it to the municipality's commitment to effective public participation and governance.

Blouberg Local Municipality Mayor, Her Worship Cllr Maria Thamaga has welcomed the good governance recognition award presented to the municipality for its outstanding performance by Good Governance Africa(GGA) during its 10th Anniversary event held today ( October 2, 2024) in Johannesburg. In March, the GGA through its Governance Perfomance Index (GPI) - 2024 ranking, ranked Blouberg Local Municipality Number 1 for its outstanding performance from the sixty-one (61) Category B4 - Mostly Rural Local Municipalities Category. According to GGA's Governance Insights and Analytics, Head of Programme, Ms Chrissy Dube, when conducting the ranking for best performing municipalities; the GGA checked how the municipality looks like from Service Delivery perspective, Audit, Administrative; Leadership and Governance, Planning and Development, Monitoring as well as other mandates. Service delivery is weighted most due to the importance the local government has in terms of distributing core services to households. " The reason we are doing local government work is because between, national, provincial and local government, local government is the closest to the citizens and part of GGA's mandate is to improve the lives of citizens by empowering them to active citizenry by being accountable citizens that are able to hold the government to account , while we empowering the state to be a capable state. It is not a competition; GPI is a mirror for every municipality to look at. If you have seen where you ranked as a municipality in the GPI , we are able to do a deep dive , give you the reasons why you ranked where you ranked; where you are doing well and where you need to improve". Handing over the GGA Awards of Recognition, Executive Director GGA East Africa, Tina Asante-Apeatu indicated that maladministration, corruption are shamed publicly and it is also crucial to recognized good governance perfomance publicly. Upon accepting the Award, Mayor Maria Thamaga indicated that, the municipality will continue to do things by the book and prioritize its citizens in terms of service provision.The Mayor further thanked GGA founder, Mr Robert Rose for the good work in advancing good governance in the continent. " Thank you very much for the opportunity, I feel very much honored on behalf of Blouberg Municipality to receive this Award of Recognition. This, says a lot about us as an institution. The GPI rating indicates our ability to deliver sustainable services regardless of how much we have, how we run our finances, the quality of the team work as Council, the planning and our administration in general. I would like to extend my appreciation to the founder, Robert Rose and his entire team. Your commitment to good governance in Africa is really encouraging. Continue to advocate for good governance in our mother continen, and we wish you many many more decades of existence".