DEPUTY City Manager, Philip Sithole has been criticized by the DA as being too vague and failing to provide concrete answers surrounding the controversial expenditure on the Essence Festival.
Sithole, backed by ANC councillors addressed the Economic Development and Planning Committee, on questions that had been raised regarding the Essence Festival.
Since 2015, the city has spent an estimated R175 million on the Essence Festival and DA eThekwini councillor, Chris Pappas said when questioned about the return on this investment, Sithole was unable to give statistics on how many permanent jobs had been generated or evidence of how local businesses had benefited from this investment by the city.
Pappas said there had also been no report to the city’s Ethics Committee on ANC Councillor Futhi Maluleka, whose business benefited from lucrative Essence contracts in 2016.
“The DA has on numerous occasions called for a full report on the Essence Festival to be presented to the Economic Development and Planning Committee. The failure to present an in-depth report to the committee is an indictment on the ANC municipality and a clear indication that there are no long term or tangible benefits for the residents or economy of the city,” said Pappas.
He said the DA believed that the Essence Festival amounted to nothing more than an exercise in wasteful and fruitless expenditure.
“The DA will continue to defend the ratepayers of the city and push for Essence Festival funding to be redirected to poverty alleviation, the creation of permanent jobs and infrastructure investment,” said Pappas.
What municipality could do with the money
EThekwini Municipality recently confirmed it will host the 2017 Essence Festival despite a funding shortfall of R12.8 million.
Pappas said there was so much more the municipality could be doing with the money which has been used to fund the Essence Festival.
He said the money could be used to:
– Employ 1458 people earning R10 000 a month to keep informal settlements, roads, beaches, parks and rivers clean.
– Ppurchase 620 Metro Police vehicles plus 10 mobile camera stations.
– Build 1590 houses for the poor.
– Fit 21 875 houses with solar geysers.
– Fully upgrade 583 parks accross the city.
– Build six state-of-the-art community youth centres complete with libraries and free WiFi.
– Employ 500 more Metro Police officers.
– Resurface 145km of tarred roads.
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