The municipality has identified several parcels of municipal-owned land, which it hopes will fast-track development and investment in Ekurhuleni.
These are called Strategic Land Parcels and include inter alia, the Edenvale Sports Grounds or JP Bezuidenhout Park, the Rondebult Bird Sanctuary and Dries Niemandt Stadium.
These are all valuable municipal-owned assets over which the council is the trustee on behalf of its residents.
Along with a list of 40 land parcels, the municipality requested council to approve a process framework within which these parcels could be made available to interested parties, either in the form of an outright sale, a lease agreement or as a public private partnership (PPP).
The City Planning and Economic Development (CPED) oversight committee, which is mandated to perform oversight over the departments of city planning and economic development, approved the process but all parties agreed that it was not in the best interest of council to approve the list.
“This would in effect give the mayoral committee and departmental officials carte blanche to proceed with the process without the oversight committee having had insight into why these land parcels were recommended, what was proposed for each of them and who the interested parties were,” said the CPED spokesperson for the Democratic Alliance and ward 18 councillor, Clr Heather Hart.
“We certainly do not want to hold up possible development and investment in Ekurhuleni, but at the same time we have a responsibility to the ratepayers and residents of Ekurhuleni to ensure that any municipal-owned property is only alienated responsibly,” she said.
Clr Hart added that she is satisfied with the process approved, which sets out clear steps that need to be followed and which is in line with the Municipal Finance Management Act section 14, which deals with the disposal of municipal assets.
”This section demands that the process must be fair, equitable and transparent, that supply chain management policies must be followed and that a fair market price must be achieved and we will certainly hold the executive to account in this regard,” said Clr Hart.
The NEWS sent an enquiry to the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) on February 18 for comment by February 21.
At the time of going to print, no comment was received.
