BOIPATONG. – The Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) Speaker Msebenzi Qqelosha officially opened the council sitting where Executive Mayor Gretha Hlongwane delivered the State of the Municipality address (SOMA).
The auspicious event was held at Boipatong Sports Stadium on Friday. Cllr Hlongwane began her address by congratulating the recently newly elected Regional Leadership of the ANC, subsequently greeting and welcoming dignitaries including the masses at large.
“It is the year of putting shoulder to the wheel in building a united and prosperous municipality,”she said. Though hopeful, Hlongwane admitted to there being pressing challenges with regards to service delivery in Emfuleni. “The problems we are faced with are the ageing infrastructure, electrical cable theft, illegal dumping, sanitation capacity that has reached its limit, non-payment of municipal services, tampering with green electrical boxes, illegal connections by residents, increase in pothole backlog and waterlogged houses.
Hlongwane stated that the fact that a large percentage of the people of Emfuleni do not pay for their services worsened the situation. “This is why we needed to employ a debt collector who would collect all those monies in order for us to deliver services. We are also going to implement specific projects to monitor and enforce payment by big businesses just as we act against our own residents.
“The main sources of own revenue is derived from electricity, property rates, water, sanitation and refuse removal, also contributing positively to the municipality’s revenue collection. The proposed tariff increases are electricity at 12.11%, Property rates at 9%, Water at 11%, Sanitation at 11% Waste collection, 9% and other tariffs 5.8%.”
Hlongwane highlighted some of the achievements of the municipality, “We acquired 55 new specialised heavy commercial fleet for service delivery, we won the Municipality of the Year Award from the Institute of Municipal Finance Officers (IMFO). We integrated our system of governance with responding effectively to the requirement for cooperative governance.”
Hlongwane says that President Zuma challenged leaders in municipalities to go ‘Back-to-Basics’ to strengthen the system of local government. “In going back to basics we must ensure that as a municipality we provide water, electricity, parks and recreational facilities, street lights, pavements with sidewalks, refuse removals, grass cutting and clean municipalities. We should also fix potholes and correct the billing challenges affecting households.”
Tabling the IDP plan and the 2015/2016 budget plan, she said the total budget for the 2015/16 financial year stands at R5.7 billion with an increase of 7% from the previous year’s capital expenditure which allocated R533 million with the operational expenditure at R5,2 billion to boost or rehabilitate existing infrastructure, improve sanitation and waste removal, upgrade roads and storm water as well as address service delivery backlogs.
This budget that we present today is based on a collection rate of 84%,” Hlongwane concludes.
