08 Nov 2015

The Vice President, Mr Mokgweetsi Masisi says the BOS ISO 9001:2008 Certification Quality Management System (QMS) is anchored and premised on institutions being reliable, consistent, guaranteeing and meeting minimum levels of key processes and services.

Speaking at Kweneng District Council unveiling of the much awaited One Stop Service Centre in Molepolole last week, Mr Masisi said it should be considered that local authorities have the potential to provide stability and promote good governance; hence it is possible to build a stronger national government working from the local level.

By securing a high quality performance of local authorities, he said public policies coming from central government could be enlivened through efficient application, allowing the whole system to become stronger.

“This type of coherent approach will help build reliable and consistent governments,” he emphasised.

The Vice President has further noted that the trickle down effects of the QMS would sustain performance improvement within the district, resulting in transparency of the council operations.

For his part, Minister of Presidential Affairs and Public Administration, Mr Erick Molale said in Georgia- USA, the economy transformed in two years after they realised that customer satisfaction was core.

He therefore underscored that locally, if public officers are capacitated, it would result in quick service delivery processes, resulting in customer satisfaction ultimately saving government unnecessary costs.

BOBS managing director Ms Masego Marobela commended the QMS team saying it was not a smooth sailing process for KDC to attain the certification. She said during the certification processes, they found out that processes were not documented resulting in inefficiency. She said KDC processes were now documented in a quality manual document.

Ms Marobela however, cautioned the team to put more effort in what they do to sustain the certificate and encouraged them to share the knowledge with others.

KDC council secretary, Mr Wazha Tema explained that the journey started in 2011. He said the organisation then was in disarray characterised by poor service delivery, non-adherence to service standards, books of accounts were five years behind and all previous external audits gave an adverse audit report.

There was low staff morale, silo mentality was reigning and there were increased customer complaints which took 60 per cent of their time trying to resolve them.

He said the council then embarked on a turnaround strategy to reverse the bad image and address all the ills. They then chose a standard. In 2011, they started training the project team.

By 2012 they had sensitized all staff including councillors. Then the following projects milestones were achieved among others and documentation of procedures, implementation, auditing, launching of the document and certification in August 2015.

Since the implementation of QMS, the council  has seen signs of improvement in its operations through service delivery, customer satisfaction, use of resources, staff motivation and involvement.

ISO certification is the process by which an independent body certifies that the activities of a work area meet the standards laid down for the environment in which that activity takes place. Ends