EThekwini Municipality Mayor Cyril Xaba. | Supplied
Durban — EThekwini Municipality Mayor Cyril Xaba said the City was hard at work to ensure that services are delivered accordingly to the public.
Xaba made these statements on Thursday morning at the Moses Mabhida stadium, where he shared a report on his first 100 days in office.
He said the overall financial situation of the city was “sound and healthy”, citing that the city did not owe Eskom.
Xaba said that the city had obtained an unqualified audit opinion from the Auditor-General and had taken heed to matters raised.
“For instance, to strengthen governance, we are implementing consequence management to deal with employees who are involved in maladministration as demonstrated by the reduction of disciplinary cases backlog from 334 to four,” he said.
He cited the recently released Business Confidence Index (BCI) report, which indicated an increase of 63.01 in the third quarter, from 55.49 in the second quarter, in the business confidence in the city.
According to the Mayor, site visits to water and sanitation infrastructure in areas where people are experiencing intermittent water supply or lack thereof, were being conducted from early October.
Xaba said that out of the 23 bathing beaches, 20 were currently open.
He said that an oversight visit to the Northern Wastewater Treatment Works, undergoing repairs and upgrades for R500 million was satisfactory and the quality of effluent being discharged to the Umgeni River was enhanced.
“The plant forms part of the 10 wastewater treatment works we are jointly repairing with Umgeni-uThukela water which handles 90% of the sewage in eThekwini,” said Xaba.
To improve waste management, the capacity of the Cleansing and Solid Waste Unit was increased by the procurement of a new fleet, and upgrading and rehabilitating landfill sites.
Xaba noted that eleven derelict buildings were being demolished and seven hijacked buildings had been returned to owners.
He said 178 high-performance vehicles had been procured, to better capacitate the Metro Police.
Xaba said the city had released 34 properties for leasing, forming part of the city’s “proactive” land release strategy.
He said that as part of the current debt relief programme ending in December, it had been agreed that a dispute resolution mechanism be incorporated in order to ensure that customers disputing their high bills were not left out of the programme.
An additional intervention to grow the City’s revenue is the programme of writing off debt for deceased properties up to the value of R1 million.
The water and meter readings have been migrated to the revenue section to improve the quality and accuracy of bills issued to customers.
Addressing the issue of the 2022 flood victims, Xaba said that sites had been identified for the building of permanent houses.
“We are pleased to report that the city has finalised this process and planning approvals have been granted for six sites which can accommodate all families that are currently accommodated in Temporary Emergency Accommodation in eThekwini.
“The sites are shovel-ready for the province to commence with the building of permanent structures,” Xaba said.
Xaba said that the city had spent the disaster recovery grant of R1.2 billion in full, which was allocated by the National Government to repair road and stormwater infrastructure damaged during the 2022 floods.
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