Emfuleni Local Municipality launch 100 days action plan

In a bid to report back to the community after the elections that was held four months ago Emfuleni Local Municipality outlined its action plan on service delivery. Executive Mayor, Cllr. Greta Hlongwane who was recently elected as the deputy president of SALGA (South African Local Government Association) will be engaging with the authorities in a view that the municipality be reinstated to its metropolitan status as it is one of the biggest municility in terms of size.

Recently the municipality faced an avalanche of protests which among others saw residents of Debonair Park marching against the billing system and this was further fuelled by the council disconnecting illegal electricity. As it stand R4million in revenue was lost on a substation due to illegal connection.

Addressing the media, Hlongwane said ''We are a developmental municipality that continuously strives to improve the quality of life of its community by subscribing to Batho-Pele principles. We want to improve the system of inter-governmental relation and continue to build it in a coordinated way. Youth in Dialogue Indaba is already in place and are now working on convening a Youth Summit in the near future, will also be renovating sports facilities which will keep them away from crime and drugs. Audit on RDP houses that are being sold will be conducted as we don't understand why our people don't hand-over the houses to the government when they no longer need them. Residential place cannot be utilized for business because by so doing this reduce the supply of power to the other, we are also looking at implementing by-laws that will prevent people from erecting shacks and churches anywhere without the municipality's consent''.

Among projects the residents of the Emfuleni can look forward to are a number of jobs which will be created through the EPWP (Expanded Public Works Programme) and labour intensive construction methods with R11 million allocated, student accommodation problem resolved with stakeholders and Mayoral Imbizo's taking place once a quarter as part of public participation programme.

The municipality will be looking to name and shame contractors whose work was unsatisfactory as this is deemed wasteful expenditure. Unfinished projects will be finalised and as such no tenders will be awarded to them.

In conclusion she said: ''To complement women's month, workshops will be conducted with a manageable group of women entrepreneurs, starting from 22 August until 26 August 2011 and it will focus on issues such as entrepreneur skills, business training, registration of cooperatives and companies, taxes and funding''.