New chief operations officer ready to serve the metro
Newly appointed Nelson Mandela Bay municipality chief operations officer Sidima Dyani plans to hit the ground running by attempting to resolve administrative issues hindering service delivery.
Dyani was appointed behind closed doors at a council meeting on April 3 and started work on Tuesday.
Understanding the complexities that come with working in a coalition government, Dyani said he had learnt a few tricks from his time with the Johannesburg municipality and its entities that are also governed by a coalition.
He worked as the chief operations officer for Pikitup, the integrated waste management service provider for Johannesburg, for more than three years and also had a stint as an acting chief executive for four months.
He was also at the Johannesburg Market as acting chief operations officer in 2017 and worked for the City of Johannesburg as a director for more than two years.
Dyani holds a master’s degree from Nelson Mandela University in development studies and is now pursuing another master’s in leadership in governance at the University of Pretoria.
He also holds a postgraduate diploma in management from Witwatersrand University, where he completed the National Treasury competence framework requirements.
“I was with the City of Johannesburg in a range of capacities, including the acting executive director for planning and managing,” Dyani said.
“In the era of coalitions, it is very difficult because you’re obviously pulled in different directions.”
But as administrators, Dyani said all that was required was to apply principles of governance and ensure the law was complied with as far as possible, while politicians had the responsibility to define political direction.
One of Dyani’s responsibilities in the metro is to ensure improved performance in grant funding, a matter he said would be one of his focal points.
“In terms of governance, there are very strict delegations that are accorded to the office of the COO, and as such the function of supply chain management does not necessarily sit with me.
“However, having said that, we have in the past been engaged in trying to improve the performance of either the unit or grant performance, which is a responsibility which lies in my office in Nelson Mandela Bay.”
Responding to questions about how his office would assist in ensuring that issues of red tape at supply chain and critical vacancies are filled in the different departments, Dyani said three important questions would have to be answered.
“It’s really a question of how do we ensure that supply chain standard operating procedures are up to date?
“How do we ensure that we introduce strict consequence management so that people are held responsible in their various roles of employment, and how do we ensure that we align our resources with what we have set out to do.”
Dyani said from the minimal information he had, he understood that there was a capacity deficit in the supply chain unit and one of the critical things that needed to be done was to fill those vacancies.
“I’m speaking off the cuff when I say that as a city we need to ensure that there are sufficient people in the unit to carry out their responsibilities and put monitoring systems in place because some issues experienced [in the unit] fall through the cracks and only in the end would it be realised that something did not happen.”
He said staff establishment was the function of the city manager, Noxolo Nqwazi, but as people who would be working as a team, they needed to support her in ensuring that some of the basic matters were dealt with to be able to fully execute their primary mandate.