11.  Enhancing Human Resources 

Janelle Plummer and Richard Slater 

Municipal efforts to encourage partnership initiatives will be affected by the human resource capacity of the municipality. Unsurprisingly, evidence from case studies in various parts of the world strongly suggests that the greater the capacity, the more likely a municipality is to succeed in developing and sustaining effective partnerships. The paradox is that those without capacity - those most in need of support from the private sector - are likely to find partnerships furthest from their reach.

Many of the issues discussed throughout this book have drawn attention to the capacity constraints of municipalities, and in particular the basic lack of skills required to meet the new challenges of government. At the same time, the book describes the wide spectrum of issues that municipalities must absorb if they are to develop and sustain partnerships with the private sector. The sheer extent of this information requires the municipality to become a learning organisation. This chapter presents a framework of the skills a municipality requires to enter into and sustain effective service partnerships for the poor. Two case studies are used to illustrate the key issues: Stutterheim, South Africa, and Gweru, Zimbabwe.

The human resource pattern in municipalities will vary quite considerably from one case to another, yet as we have seen in Chapter 6, municipalities display some basic similarities that characterise their core competencies, and the functioning of the organisation, staff and management. Most municipalities are based on a separation of the political and administrative functions. A typical municipality will be structured in relation to the primary functional areas, resulting in engineering (including water supply), public health (including solid waste and perhaps non-network sanitation services), finance, administration, and planning divisions or departments. This structure (discussed in Chapter 12) is a key factor influencing human resource capacity. The skills deficiencies of municipalities are well known and are not repeated here. The discussion below focuses on the skill sets required and mechanisms municipalities must employ to sustain those skill sets. Box 11.2 provides a summary table of this skills framework.