The public hearing took place at the Protea Hotel Ranch Resort in Polokwane, Limpopo, on 3 and 4 October 2011. Through this first hearing, the Commission sought to form the basis for a subsequent hearing which will, based on the work that have been done at the first hearing and as a result of engagement at that hearing, endeavour to identify appropriate interventions and remedies for municipal failures and recommend solutions to policy makers going forward. Overall, the public hearing aimed at providing a rare opportunity for stakeholders to reach a consensus on research and policy issues pertaining to the Local Government Fiscal Framework (LGFF) in order to develop a structured research agenda going forward. The research agenda will seek to provide policy options to the issues raised via sound research.

At the public hearing, Dr Monkam briefly presented the preliminary conclusions and policy recommendations of her paper entitled: Local Municipality Productive Efficiency and its Determinants in South Africa. The paper assesses the technical efficiency of 231 local municipalities in South Africa for 2007 and investigates the potential determinants of efficiency gaps among local municipalities in the country using the nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique.