Municipal Service Partnerships
Corporate and community-based organisations play a significant roll when a municipality embraces and adopts these partnerships
What is a municipal service partnership?
A municipal service partnership (MSP) is an agreement between a municipality and a service provider. A service provider may be another public authority (such as a water board or a district municipality), a private company, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) or a community-based organisation (CBO).
In terms of the agreement, a service provider undertakes to provide a particular municipal service on behalf of a municipality within specific timeframes, budget and targets. The service provider will either be responsible for delivering a service to the entire community or only a section thereof. It may also be responsible to provide an entire or only a particular aspect of the service – for example, a community based organisation can make an agreement to collect rubbish from households and streets, and stack it in places where council trucks will collect it.
Role of citizens in MSP’s
Citizens and their organisations also have very important roles to play in the planning an implementation of MSP’s.
Some of these are:
Assisting the municipality to accurately decide on which services are to be expanded and improved, particularly during the planning stages and insisting that council consults citizens during decision-making.
Residents should also work with NGO’s, CBO’s and political parties to develop proposals for council to consider. Communities can also request the municipality to appoint a committee of community representatives to monitor processes as well as to advise the municipality on priorities for service extension and improvement.
Communities or their representatives could also play some role in the evaluation of potential service providers, the involvement of communities in service provision and monitoring of the performance of service providers.
This kind of involvement from citizens will ensure that municipal planning and decision-making process will reflect their needs and priorities and will lead to the types of decisions that will make for an open, fair and democratic local government.
Planning for service delivery and improvement
One of a municipality’s most important tasks is to find out the needs of its citizens and how best to provide for these needs.
Firstly, a municipality must determine what services it is providing, who is receiving it and what is the quality of the thereof. For example: How often is the refuse collected?
Secondly, the municipality must determine what services should be expanded or improved. Are some areas in the community very dirty and poorly maintained?
Thirdly, the priorities for expanding or improving services must be decided.
Once it has been established which services are to be expanded or improved clear timeframes and targets must be developed for that the municipality can decide the best ways to reach its goals. It must also decide what resources – financial, equipment, and skills – it will require to meet its goals.
It may happen that a municipality discovers that it does not have sufficient resources and may decide that it will phase the provision of services or only provide it to a section of the community. It will also need to rethink how it will implement the provision of services. In other words, will it provide the service directly or with a MSP or a combination of methods. There are a number of MSP’s to choose from they are explained below.
Types of MSPs
Service contracts
A service contract is an agreement between a municipality and a service provider to provide a particular aspect of a municipal service on a short-term basis (only one or two years). The municipality provides the budget and monitors the performance of the service provider to ensure that the service provided is of a good quality and within the allocated budget.
An example of a service contract is repairs and maintenance of municipal equipment.
Management contracts
A management contract is an agreement between a municipality and a service provider in terms of which the service provider is responsible for all aspects of a particular service. This type of agreement typically lasts between three and five years. An example of a management contract is refuse removal where the service provider is responsible for managing the collection of refuse, while using the municipality’s staff and equipment.
How does a MSP operate?
The contract between the two parties will describe each side’s rights and responsibilities. For example, for a refuse collection contract in a particular part of the community the service provider may be required to provide refuse tips in designated areas and empty them a certain number of times a week.
The contract will also specify how often the service provider will receive payment. The fee may be fixed or vary based on the provider’s performance
The contract must also state that the municipality has the right to inspect the operations of the service provider to make sure that they are doing what they are supposed to. If the service is not provided at a satisfactory level the municipality has the right to take certain actions. For example, the municipality could withhold payment until the service provider acts in terms of the contract and in more serious cases the municipality could also end the contract.
The municipality’s most important job during implementation of the MSP contract is to monitor performance to ensure that all the requirements are being met and that citizens receive the correct amount and quality of services.
Source – Municipal Service Delivery
