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Newly appointed Makhado municipal manager, Mr Freddy Tshivhengwa.

New municipal manager wants to forge partnerships

Date: 09 December 2017 By: Andries van Zyl

The Makhado Municipality on Tuesday officially introduced their newly appointed municipal manager, Mr Freddy Tshivhengwa, to members of the media.

When introducing Tshivhengwa, mayor Shonisani Sinyosi reminded him that he, as accounting officer, has a mammoth task of ensuring that the staff carry out their duties to realise the municipality’s Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and the Service Delivery and Budget Implementation Plan (SDBIP). “As Council, we have expressed our commitment to support him as the accounting officer to execute his duties as outlined on his conditions of employment and other applicable legislation in local government,” said Sinyosi.

The decision to appoint Tshivhengwa was taken on 13 October during an urgent council meeting. His appointment is effective from 1 December this year with a 5-year employment contract.

But who is Tshivhengwa and what prompted Council to nominate him as the best man for the job?

According to Council, Tshivhengwa is an engineer by profession who holds a national diploma in engineering. He also has a B.Tech degree in civil engineering- and transport, as well as a BSC honours degree in applied sciences of transportation. Apart from this, he also holds a master’s degree in business administration, and is a professional engineering technologist.

Tshivhengwa’s work background include being a technologist for a private consultancy firm. He was also a senior project manager at the provincial Department of Public Works, as well as a project manager at the Limpopo Independent Development Trust.

As for his municipal skills, Tshivhengwa was the general manager of technical services at the Vhembe District Municipality (VDM), during which time he also acted a municipal manager for one year. He was also general manager of capital investment and infrastructure development at the City of Johannesburg under Johannesburg Water. In total, Tshivhengwa claims 10 years’ experience in local government.

In addressing the media, Tshivhengwa said it is his expectation that the municipality and the media should forge a partnership. “The media play a critical role in terms of giving information to our community with regard to the performance and failures of the municipality. But in the main, my expectation is that we should try to strike a balance in terms of reporting,” said Tshivhengwa.

Tshivhengwa said that his focus will be on audit issues and also to ensure that the municipality improve service delivery to the community. “We need to ensure that all the targets that we’ve set, with regard to the SDBIP, are achieved, and we need to get a good response from our community,” said Tshivhengwa. He added that he will therefore also have to focus on staff morale. “Without training and capacity, we will not be able to deliver. That is one of the areas I am going to focus on – to make sure our staff are equipped,” said Tshivhengwa.

Tshivhengwa has no former track record with the Makhado Municipality. The closest he has come was his service at the VDM. He is, however, a true son of the soil being born and growing up in Nzhelele.

 
 
 

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Andries van Zyl

Andries joined the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror in April 1993 as a darkroom assistant. Within a couple of months he moved over to the production side of the newspaper and eventually doubled as a reporter. In 1995 he left the newspaper group and travelled overseas for a couple of months. In 1996, Andries rejoined the Zoutpansberger as a reporter. In August 2002, he was appointed as News Editor of the Zoutpansberger, a position he holds until today.

 
 

More photos... 

Mayor Shonisani Sinyosi (left), pictured with newly appointed Makhado municipal manager, Mr Freddy Tshivhengwa. His appointment is effective from 1 December.

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