Ekurhuleni mayor Clr Mondli Gungubele outlined bold steps to grow the economy of the city and create jobs, when he delivered his final State of the City Address.
Addressing the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipal Council, at Faranani Multipurpose Centre, in Tsakane, and guests at the overflow area at the adjacent stadium on Wednesday morning, last week, Gungubele outlined the three corridors of development to drive the economy of the city in areas such as logistics, manufacturing, education, trade, construction and hospitality.
The address was the mayor’s last for this term of office which dates to 2011.
“The approach of building a new city and an identity means that a significant proportion of this administration’s time was vested in the development of spatial development frameworks,” Gungubele said.
“This new city design has led to the conceptualisation of an effective way to reconfigure our urban spaces and economic centres, along three key functional economic corridors.”
These corridors are the Thami Mnyele corridor which concentrates development in a straight line from Tembisa to Vosloorus, including all surrounding areas along the corridor.
The main driver for economic development in this corridor is high level roads and transport infrastructure.
The OR Tambo Aerotropolis core focuses development along the triangle formed by Kempton Park, Boksburg and Germiston, including Edenvale and Benoni.
This corridor leverages on creative, gateway trade, technology research and development, and logistics sectors.
The Thelle Mogoerane corridor runs from Vosloorus to Nigel, including developments such as the Carnival Junction, in Brakpan, and the OR Tambo inland port, aimed at unlocking the logistic potential of the city.
The developments in this area will have mixed land uses that include industry as well as human settlements located nearby.
The city is taking a new approach to densify the provision of houses, through building high rise residential units, including flats for both RDP, rental and/or buying through bank loans.
The Brakpan old location development, for instance, would have yielded 2 500 units, but will now allow 11 598 units as part of this policy.
“This new approach will lead to a quantum leap in housing development in Ekurhuleni,enabling us to efficiently accommodate more people and provide more livable human settlements, with a full basket of services and social amenities such as schools, clinics and public transport,” said Gungubele.
The mayor also touched on the service delivery programme for the past five years, which saw all townships now having their own fire station, the rollout of free WiFi to 900 hotspots, introduction of e-Health in 40 clinics to shorten waiting time and remove the need to open files if your details are on the system, as well as investing over R2.7-billion in roads and storm water infrastructure.
The call centre continues to be a single point of contact for residents to report service interruptions; the Harambee bus is on track to roll out from July in Tembisa, our CBDs are kept clean through the Inner City Night Cleaning programme, while Clean Neighbourhood Fridays continue and Ekurhuleni continues to have clean water attaining the Blue Drop status once again.
According to Gungubele, the work done in the last five years in improving the management of its finances, reporting on service delivery and compliance to legislation was rewarded by the two back-to-back clean audits.
Also read: Mayor salutes women
Urban development to fortify economic growth
Mayor to deliver final State of the City address
