Govt To Amend Constitution To 'Streamline' Devolution

Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Ziyambi Ziyambi has revealed that the government will move to amend the Constitution with regards to devolution. The government wants to amend the Constitution to ensure that the decentralisation process does not result in bloated provincial structures. Speaking to the Sunday Mail, Ziyambi said,

The way (Provincial and Metropolitan Councils) are structured at the moment, all the Honourable MPs within the province sit in the Provincial Councils with all the chiefs and Provincial Councilors. You sit there in Parliament, you allocate a budget to the Provincial Council, you go back to the province and sit in the Provincial Council and determine how the budget you allocated is used. Then you go back to Parliament and play an oversight role to things that you have been doing.

So, perhaps it is one area that I believe the Minister of Local Government will be able to tackle and bring it to us so we look at how we can amend the Constitution and deal with that. It’s just not appropriate … These are some of the issues that need cleaning up, forget about the Provincial Ministers.

More: The Sunday Mail