Bay metro urged to tackle mounting backlog
● Securing electricity substations and repairing water leaks should also be priorities, business chamber executive tells officials
Addressing the Bay’s escalating infrastructure maintenance backlogs, securing electricity substations and repairing water leaks should be priorities for the municipality in the 2024/2025 financial year.
This was the input of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber at a poorly attended 2024/2025 integrated development plan (IDP) and budget review meeting at the City Hall yesterday.
Ratepayer associations and the business sector had been invited to attend the meeting, but just one representative from the chamber and two from the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Nafcoc) pitched up.
Chamber mega cluster chair Clyde Swartz said the municipality faced an enormous task in getting the city to work effectively despite diminishing revenue collection.
He said the municipality’s primary challenge lay in the mounting infrastructure maintenance backlog, an issue that was often sidelined when budgets were allocated for other projects.
“I don’t know if the metro will be able to cover these costs [in the 2024/2025 budget], but our fear as the chamber is that budget will be channelled to other priorities and away from maintenance.
“We want to implore the city’s leadership to prioritise and support infrastructure directorates such as electricity, roads, water and sanitation in their request for funding for maintenance.
“If we don’t, critical assets such as substations will be affected,” Swartz said.
“New road and sewerage installations are important, but you can’t extend sewerage infrastructure if the pump stations don’t work.”
The chamber and its members have assisted the metro by “adopting” certain substations that are prone to vandalism and securing them.
But Swartz said the metro needed to up its game and secure other substations that supplied power to businesses.
“Security is a big issue, we have secured some substations but can’t do this for all of them,” he said.
“[But] we support the municipality in addressing shortcomings and service delivery issues.
“We are willing to provide expertise and volunteer groups.”
He said the various business clusters were prepared to assist with repairing water leaks and securing key substations.
“We urge the municipality to look into securing key points such as the power station in Chatty, which is central to supplying electricity to big parts of the city. We are happy to put money into some of these key points while working with the municipality and private security companies.”
For the 2024/2025 financial year, the municipality’s proposed infrastructure repair maintenance budget is:
● Electricity: R121.3m;
● Roads: R106.2m;
● Water: 143.7m; and
● Sanitation: R89.7m.
Earlier, mayor Gary van Niekerk said he was disappointed that only three people from outside the municipality had attended the meeting, and suggested reconvening it to ensure increased attendance.
On the issues raised by Swartz, Van Niekerk said officials recognised the role played by the chamber in securing substations.
“The responsibility to hone in on service delivery issues rests on my shoulders,” he said.
“The different business chambers are always at pains to explain to us how their main focus is to ensure there is no more jobs shedding.
“This is why I looked forward to engaging all the chambers and other formations in the business sector on how we can move forward in addressing some of the issues they have raised with us.”
Van Niekerk said though the city’s infrastructure maintenance backlog remained a challenge, a plan was in place to turn it around. Nafcoc representative Mandisa Kondile said she had little input to make because “we found out about this meeting this morning while we were on our way to another engagement”.
She supported the mayor’s suggestion that another meeting be convened.