Strong municipalities needed to grow the economy

Efficient and strong municipalities are essential for South African economic growth and job creation, President Cyril Ramaphosa has said.

The President was delivering a speech at the District Development Model (DDM) Presidential Imbizo at the Tsakane Stadium in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng on Friday.

The Presidential Imbizo is a platform for communities to engage with leaders from all three sectors of government on service delivery challenges and for the executive to respond and tell the community what they are doing to address these challenges.

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“We have said as a government of national unity that our main priority is to grow the economy, create jobs and fight poverty. But to do this, we need strong municipalities. It is municipalities that are the engines of development, because they provide services to our people, but they are also economic engines.

“We want our municipalities to work efficiently. Our councillors should not constantly hear that our people do not even know their councillors. This should stop. Councillors are elected to serve the people and they should be visible in the community. They should hold meetings with our communities. We should not wait for an Imbizo to come and listen to our people who are raising their concerns,” the president said.

President Ramaphosa said of the Ekurhuleni Municipality that it is one of the most important hubs in South Africa.

“The Ekurhuleni Municipality is well positioned as an economic engine for job creation. Ekurhuleni is a major transport hub. But apart from that… it is the manufacturing capital of our country. Ekurhuleni plays a very important role in the life of our province, and in the life of our country and our economy.

“It is home to Africa’s largest and busiest airport… OR Tambo International Airport. It is also a major hub for freight corridors in our country. This makes the metro a substantial economic player as manufacturing is one of the major contributors to GDP,” he said.

However, President Ramaphosa acknowledged that service delivery in the area needs to be improved, and assured the community gathered at the imbizo that government has heard their cries.

“We want to improve the services provided to our people. We know that service delivery is one of the key challenges, especially water and electricity.

“We are going to focus more on water… building new reservoirs, increasing our bulk water supply. We are also going to focus on housing. Housing shortage is one of the challenges that many of our people are facing and we are going to address that,” he said.

Another concern raised by community members is crime. The president said that Police Minister Senzo Mchunu is focusing on “how we can tackle extortion, the construction mafia and gender-based violence”.

“Those men playing football with the women of our country must stop and that is what we are going to focus on. Gender-based violence is a pandemic and our people are working on that very focused,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za