Chairperson of the NCOP,   As we start this session, I wish to express our deep condolences to the families of those travellers who lost their lives in a horrific bus crash near Makhado on Sunday, and to the nations of Zimbabwe and Malawi, who lost their compatriots.   Our thoughts are with the families, friends and colleagues of the deceased. We wish the dozens of injured persons a full and speedy recovery.   Honourable Members,   Government has a comprehensive framework to monitor the state of service delivery and the quality of services offered by municipalities.   The Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation monitors government’s programmes and conducts oversight visits to advance the goals set out in the Medium Term Development Plan.   Government has adopted the District Development Model, which is an integrated planning, budgeting and implementation framework.   This helps to ensure that all three spheres of government work together in a coherent and coordinated manner, together with other role-players in the District.   The implementation of the plans developed through the District Development Model is monitored to track progress on service delivery and other developmental outcomes.   The Department monitors and supports municipalities in a number of ways.   These include the Inter-Ministerial Committee on the Municipal Performance Turnaround Strategy, which is responsible for strategic interventions in prioritised municipalities to strengthen financial stability and enhance service delivery.   The Department of Cooperative Governance leads the implementation of Municipal Support and Improvement Plans for distressed municipalities. These are integrated support plans tailored to address specific service delivery and governance challenges. The implementation of these plans is monitored and reported on, on a quarterly basis.   The Metro Trading Services Programmes is a reform programme led by the National Treasury to address infrastructure deficiencies and enhance service delivery in municipal trading services such as water, electricity, sanitation and waste management.   National Treasury rigorously monitors municipal financial health through the Local Government Revenue and Expenditure Reports.   This system tracks budget credibility, spending on service delivery infrastructure, revenue collection and debt levels.   The City of Cape Town shares many of the challenges of other metros and cities.   These include rapid urbanisation and population shifts, leading to increased pressure on services like housing, water and sanitation.   The legacy of apartheid spatial planning placed many townships and informal settlements far away in distance from economic hubs and service centres.   While the City of Cape Town tends to perform well on measures of financial governance, it has not demonstrated significant progress in reducing the levels of inequality within the metro.   In fact, census data shows that in the decade between 2011 and 2022, Cape Town performed worse than the average of all metros in expanding access to services such as refuse removal, piped water, electricity and flush toilets.   Analysis of the city’s budget suggests that the per capita investment in infrastructure and service delivery is significantly lower in townships and informal settlements than in the city’s more affluent areas.   In the spirit of cooperative governance and the Constitution, the national government works with municipalities across the country – including the City of Cape Town – to address these and other challenges.   This assistance includes conditional grants for infrastructure and capacity building, technical assistance programmes, training for municipal officials and infrastructure development support.   The national government is committed to working with provincial governments and municipalities to ensure all the country’s citizens enjoy equal access to quality services. #RamaphosaQandA(Cyril Ramaphosa 🇿🇦)