Empowerment in sport on target
Transformation ‘moving in the right direction’
MAYOR Patricia de Lille may not have any powers to deal with the City’s water crisis, but she is steaming ahead in trying get the high water tariff increases lowered.
De Lille said she had met with the executive directors and her mayoral committee to try and find a solution to the high increases.
“I have received a response from City finance officials to my request to see how the proposed water tariff can be decreased, but this reduction is not sufficient and I will be meeting with the budget team to again discuss the matter today,” she said.
De Lille said she requested the City’s finance team to reduce the tariff.
“They could reduce the amount in the loans the City would take out to reduce the proposed tariff from 26.95% to 24.45%. But I have responded to say that this reduction is not sufficient,” De Lille said.
However, the City’s 55.16% increase for those who use the least water still remains and will be approved if the City’s R49 billion budget is approved later this month.
Last month, De Lille hauled her mayoral committee and executive directors over the coals for failing to spend 40.5% of the City’s capital budget, especially given the leadership team was asking Cape Town residents to pay 26.9% more for water.
The Cape Argus has a copy of the letter, dated April 12.
De Lille said the major projects behind schedule account for R3.24 billion of the total R7.85bn capital budget and have an average 67% of their budgets unassigned.
She said that if the new water programme was excluded from the portfolio measurement, the current actual spend was 47.3%.
De Lille said the meeting proposed solutions in various City departments.
“I had a meeting with all executive directors and the City manager and we found solutions for the underspend in Transport and Urban Development and Assets and Facilities Management. The underspend in the water department has not yet been resolved.”
In January, De Lille was stripped of her powers over the water crisis in the City of Cape Town.
Deputy mayor Ian Neilson and Xanthea Limberg, mayoral committee member for water, sanitation, energy and informal settlements, are now in charge.
AN EAGERLY-awaited report on transformation in sport in South Africa showed that empowerment was taking place in different sporting codes in South Africa, Sport and Recreation Minister Tokozile Xasa said.
“At a governance and decision-making level, the report shows that more than half (60%) of federations audited have elected black presidents into position, whereas almost 70% have reported the election of boards that are more than 50% black,” Xasa said at a media briefing, after receiving the 2018 Transformation in Sport report compiled by the Eminent Persons Group (EPG).
“Women representation at board level has also been shown to be improving in that seven out of 19 federations have reported female representation at board level, larger than prescribed by the (Transformation) Charter.”
On demographic representation, Xasa said national senior male teams of athletics, cricket, football, volleyball, boxing and table tennis have all achieved the charter target with netball, chess, gymnastics, hockey and rugby “moving in the right direction to achieve this interim milestone”.
“Year on year change in the black demographic profile of senior representative teams demonstrates the progress made over a short period. Cricket’s percentage black profile has improved from 45% to 60%, hockey from 20% to 45%, whereas rugby has moved from 34% to 42%, and netball from 37% to 56%,” she said.
“The detailed report released today (Monday) shows that transformation as measured in terms of the five dimensions of the Transformation Charter is taking place, proving once again the value of Hewlett Packard’s adage ‘that only those things that gets measured gets done’.”
SA Rugby yesterday welcomed the successful achievement of its targets in the latest EPG report.
Rugby showed a 17% improvement to achieve 60% of the targets agreed with the sport and recreation South Africa (SRSA) department and the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc). The EPG sets a minimum target of 50% achievement as successful compliance.
Jurie Roux, chief executive of SA Rugby said: “We’re proud of the fact that rugby was the top performing federation from the five sports that were part of the pilot project in terms of transformation – we have worked hard to achieve our targets.
“We remain on track to deliver on our five-year Strategic Transformation Plan (STP), which we launched in 2015.
“Rugby needs to continue transforming if it is to survive in our nation’s changing demographic landscape…
“It is a business imperative for rugby as well as a high-performance opportunity to access untapped talent. Our process is well mapped out and transparent… we remain confident of delivering on the agreed targets by the end of next year.”
Roux said the state of school sport was the greatest challenge. “The report notes that only 8% of learners in South Africa’s 25 000 public schools have access to sport.” – African News Agency (ANA)
BLACK DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF SENIOR REPRESENTATIVE TEAMS DEMONSTRATES PROGRESS