Makana: A viable place to be
Nomhle Gaga
Makana Mayor presented her vision for Grahamstown at the inaugural Grahamstown Conversation on Thursday 25 August. Full report on Page 14.
Ihave been asked to talk about my vision for Grahamstown and it is for Makana – a great place to be. To achieve this I believe my first priority is to ensure that the Municipality becomes financially viable.
As you all know there are two legs to this equation, namely income and expenditure. In terms of income the most obvious is to increase revenue through revenue collection. The Municipality sits with a debt book of R330 million. What else are we going to do?: a) Address impairment losses. An analysis of our debt proved that only 47 percent or R145m is potentially collectable. Thus we must ensure that we collect on this and ensure that our policies address the writing off of the unrecoverable debt, ie deceased estates, liquidations, indigent accounts. b) Ensure that our metering for especially our bulk users is credible. We have already started looking at proposals from Syntell and Eskom to as-
sist in this regard. c) Reading meters – meter readers are reading meters again after we have made it very clear that there are standards to be met (number of meters to read per month and failing to reach these targets will have consequences). d) Overhauling the revenue section – appoint competent people in critical positions and reviewing the organisational structure e) Investigate current tariffs and adjust them where necessary f) Ensuring that productivity of staff increases in general g) Expand the indigent register h) Promote and facilitate LED, eg waste to energy, airfield, inner-city regeneration and Creative City. In terms of the last two projects the Municipality will need the business expertise in Grahamstown and we will have to enter into PPP. i) A stable Municipality and this refers to the appointment of a Municipal Manager and Director: Corporate Services
by November this year. Coming to addressing expenditure the following were already implemented: a) Moratorium on overtime b) Improved fleet management measures c) Capacitating the Supply Chain Section d) Austerity measures What should we still do? a) Reduce staff costs b) Do not employ service providers that deliver a poor standard of work.
My second priority is to ensure a positive experience to our customers, ie residents, stakeholders and visitors. A clean city is non-negotiable. Illegal dumping must be eradicated and I would welcome any proposals from you and or any other stakeholders to achieve this. The Municipality leveraged R1.6m from DEDEAT and some of this will go towards education of communities to stop illegal dumping. Another issue that forms part of the clean city concept is to