Johannesburg — THE government was setting up a delivery unit in the Presidency to prop up faltering municipalities, Collins Chabane, the minister responsible for monitoring and evaluation in the Presidency, said last night.

He said the intention was not to take over the running of struggling municipalities but to support them.

The government would not be able to achieve its priorities unless it re configured the state to improve efficiency and synergy among departments.

"The system is very complex," Chabane said during a talk on President Jacob Zuma 's first 100 days in office, organised by The Weekender and the University of the Witwatersrand's Graduate School of Public and Development Management.

Chabane said re-engineering of the state was complex, particularly as it came in the middle of the financial year. This had divided some departments, resulting in some directors-general reporting to two or three ministers. "You'll only be able get a properly functioning administration at the end of the financial year next year," he said.

Azar Jammine, chief economist at Econometrix, said Zuma's administration had started on a solid note but remained at the mercy of the prevailing global recession.

Zuma had come into office "at an inauspicious time", given the global slowdown, and his government would be hard-pressed to meet its targets, such as the goal of halving poverty by 2014, Jammine said. "We're in a deep recession at the moment and it's not of our making."

He blamed the recession's effect on SA on a lack of competitiveness that could be linked with poor education and training.

The former Democratic Alliance leader, ambassador-designate Tony Leon, also said Zuma was one of the few leaders to start off in a recession. He commended the administration for its willingness to listen.

Weekender executive editor Rehana Rossouw said the biggest test for Zuma and his team would be managing SA through the recession.

"What I'm looking for in Jacob Zuma is a servant who's prepared to lead the people; who's prepared to lead them into a better SA," she said.

Leon criticised the labour sector's "rigidity", saying it would fail to stop the swelling of the ranks of the jobless unless bold steps were taken.

"If we're going to win the war on the economic front, we're going to need the courage that we've shown on the political front," he said.

Leon took a dig at the poor performance of the education sector despite the large investment . But Chabane said the state was "lifting education to be our priority of priorities".

n Zuma plans to meet mayors and said municipalities needed to urgently increase the pace of service delivery. He told Metro FM last night that underperforming councillors should be fired.

With Hajra Omarjee