Premier Mokgosi fires up new war room to fix North West service delivery issues

North West Premier Lazarus Kagiso Mokgosi has deployed a high-level service delivery war room to confront persistent failures in water, sanitation, electricity, roads, waste management and municipal finances across the province. The structure, headed by Dr Mpho Motlhabane, will pull provincial departments, municipalities, state-owned entities and government agencies into a single command platform tasked with identifying blockages, unlocking stalled projects and forcing faster intervention where services have broken down. It is one of Mokgosi’s strongest attempts to tighten control over a service-delivery system in which failures are often spread across departments and municipalities, making accountability difficult and intervention slow. The Office of the Premier said the war room would use integrated planning, monitoring and rapid-response mechanisms to track delivery and push corrective action where institutions were failing. “The people of the North West deserve a government that responds swiftly and effectively to their needs,” he said. “The Service Delivery War Room will strengthen co-ordination, enhance oversight and ensure that challenges experienced by communities are addressed with urgency.” It will work with the province’s Accelerated Service Delivery Programme, Thuntsha Lerole, rather than replace it. Its job will include monitoring projects, measuring performance and stepping in where implementation has stalled. The war room comes as Mokgosi’s administration is also pushing technology to improve government performance. The province has outlined plans for the North West Technology Week and Digital Transformation Summit, which will run from November 22 to 26. The summit will bring together government leaders, municipalities, technology companies, universities, investors, innovators and entrepreneurs to explore practical solutions to governance and service-delivery problems. Its programme includes artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud computing, digital infrastructure and smart government, with the province insisting that the gathering must produce measurable outcomes. The government also plans to showcase efforts under way to modernise provincial systems, strengthen shared ICT services and expand digital platforms. Mokgosi called on municipalities, business, civil society, traditional leaders and communities to support the intervention.