Mashaba is clueless on how City is run – Modingoane
JOBURG – Deputy Director for Media Relations of the City responds to DA mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba's comments on the City's advertising expenditure.
Following Herman Mashaba’s criticism of the City of Johannesburg’s expenditure on advertising, the spokesperson for the City, Nthatisi Modingoane has lambasted Mashaba’s comments.
Modingoane said it was very unfortunate that an opposition political party was against residents of Johannesburg being informed about service delivery and the vote of confidence given to the City’s financial systems by globally respected agencies.
According to him, all those advertising expenses are justifiable. He said advertising this information was important because it informed residents of opportunities created for them, while also attracting investment to Johannesburg.
“For anyone to question the City’s drive to communicate its achievements to residents, it clearly means they do not understand how cities function,” said Modingoane.
“As a City, we have a budget allocated to marketing and communications, and so far the City is within this budget. The City of Johannesburg, like many other municipalities, has always had a fully capacitated communications and marketing department whose mandate is to communicate services, programmes and achievements of the City to its residents.”
He also highlighted that the State of the City Address and Budget Speech were annual activities undertaken by the municipality as per legislative requirements. “The City’s communications and marketing activities around these activities gets budgeted for annually.”
He further stated that the criticism may be viewed as an affirmation that the City’s communications and marketing machinery was effective and did reach the intended recipients which attested to principles of good governance in the City of Johannesburg.
