| Summary: | In terms of the White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service, 1995, since 1994, the year in which the first free and fair democratic elections were held, the expectations of the majority of South Africans are they political, economic, social, cultural and developmental have been pertinent issues on the agenda of the government of the African National Congress. However, driving and delivering on the expectations of the masses is a major challenge that the government cannot meet and deliver, if governance is centralised. In view of its proximity, closest to the people at grassroots level, local government can be a valuable component in the realisation of the government’s objective of delivering essential services in pursuit of a better life for all. The study focuses on the Sedibeng District Municipality that implements the Workplace Skills Development Plan to achieve the education and skills development priorities set under Local Government Sector Education Training Authority (LGSETA). The Plan is based on the training needs of employees in the field of Project Management, Customer Care, Performance Appraisal, Writing for Business Results, Empowering the Office Professional, and Leadership and Management. The training empowers employees in the related fields in order to deliver efficient services to the concerned communities. Based on the progress report of the LGSETA (2006) the problems associated with the Skills Development are: lack of training schedule, inadequate funding for continuous and further training, unavailability of tools for assessing the training impact, etc. The study hypothesized that an effective skills development strategy may lead to efficient service delivery at Sedibeng District Municipality. In order to support the hypothesis an empirical research was conducted. Findings indicate that an effective skills development strategy is crucial and does lead to employee ability to render effective services to the community. The employees in the SDM have to be capacitated to assist the municipality to meet its mandate of service provision to the community. The study concludes with significant recommendations in order to improve the challenges at the SDM. The study recommends to further explore the capacity-building initiatives of the local government to deliver quality services in their areas of jurisdiction. Assessing the implementation of capacity-building programmes and examining the service delivery networks in other local municipalities in Gauteng Province as a whole, may lead to the improved patterns of service delivery at municipal level, and could be considered as a possible avenue for further research. === MA, Public Management and Administration, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2011
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