Trollip has met some, missed some of campaign promises
On this day a year ago, Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Athol Trollip was elected and vowed, in his inauguration speech, to deliver on a number of promises he made on the campaign trail. Political reporter Siyamtanda Capa zooms in on five promises in the speech last year and what Trollip had to say yesterday about how the coalition government had fared JOBS AND ECONOMY:
2016: “The official total unemployment rate in NMB is 33%, 7% above the national average. This must be arrested and turned around as a matter of urgent priority. We need a new, bold and dynamic vision for our economy – a vision that provides for infrastructure investment that not only maintains our existing infrastructure but that will allow for the development of new infrastructure, that will attract and sustain economic investment, that will create jobs.”
2017: “The city has employed more than 2 500 people through the Expanded Public Works Programme. We are also delighted that two major national companies have invested heavily to establish two major call centres that are to be operated by graduate professionals. We have reduced unemployment by 2.2% in the last quarter of last year.”
The latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey – for the period January to June – shows the unemployment rate increased by 4.3% to reach a high of 34.4%.
STOP CORRUPTION
2016: “There will be no more wasting of our resources on the glitz and glamour of irrelevant public events, flashy cars and wasteful expenditure on cadre deployment. This municipality’s money will be used effectively by stretching every tax rand to achieve optimum outputs in the direct interest of every citizen.
“All ongoing disciplinary matters will be prioritised and finalised at the earliest opportunity. All outstanding forensic audit reports will be tabled and acted upon and we will have no reservation in conducting further forensic audits of irregular contracting and appointments if and when necessary.”
2017: “We immediately started to act against this scourge by stopping three contracts with an estimated value of R50-million. We have also recently decided to proceed with steps to seek prosecution and the retrieval of funds and moveable assets that were found to have been misappropriated in the Kabuso Report. We have suspended five senior officials and we have concluded several disciplinary cases, where officials have been suspended indefinitely.”
CLEAN CITY
2016: “We will ensure that this city looks different from KwaNobuhle to Colchester and from Wells Estate to Walmer. We don’t have to live in a filthy city nor do we have to tolerate substandard service delivery.”
2017: “One area where we haven’t done as well as we would have liked is that of the cleanliness of our city. Illegal dumping is a scourge, which has been compounded by two illegal strikes in the waste management subdirectorate.
“Our environment and unique environmental assets are God-given bequests that we are obligated to take care off. This has led to us budgeting for a special War on Waste campaign. Regrettably, the first phase did not deliver the expected results and deficient planning and poor implementation of the plan led to under-expenditure, as a result of which we lost the unspent money.”
METRO POLICE
2016: “We will operationalise and bolster the newly launched Metro Police service, making sure that our officers are appropriately trained and meet all regulatory requirements as outlined in the Police Services Act. We will boost the Metro Police budget allocation so as to be able to establish anti-drug and anti-gang units, tasked with stabilising some of the metro’s most dangerous areas.”
2017: “We are proud to have launched an effective Metro Police service with two new precincts in the northern areas and in KwaNobuhle. This service works very closely with the SAPS on a daily basis, and we are most grateful to them for their cooperation and collaboration.”
IPTS
2016: “We will engage with national Treasury to ensure that the forensic audit of the defunct IPTS can reach finality as soon as possible, so that we can work to resolve this R2.5-billion impasse that has yielded nothing in return to the benefit of this city. We will have to make these decisions dispassionately based on relevant and appropriate professional advice on whether to try and redeem this project or to scrap it.”
2017: Trollip did not mention the IPTS in his address yesterday. The IPTS forensic report has not yet been finalised by the Treasury. While the municipality has spent money over the past year on IPTS infrastructure for the Cleary Park route, and finalised a memorandum of agreement and business plans with some taxi associations, the R2.5-billion project has yet to be launched.