KwaDukuza Municipality has successfully spent its entire 2018/2019 municipal infrastructure grant (MIG) allocation of R53, 9 million.
MIG is a conditional grant to municipalities focusing on infrastructure required for basic services.
The programme is aimed at providing services to the poor and maximising economic benefits to ensure local economic spin-offs.
This will then be linked to poverty alleviation in the country and therefore, infrastructure development is to be provided in such a way that employment is maximised through labour intensive construction methods and opportunities are created for enterprises to flourish.
Initially, the municipality received an allocation of R50, 6 million in the 2018/2019 financial year.
During the MIG-mid year expenditure review by the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta), the municipality received an additional R3,3million for good expenditure performance.
Tabling the MIG annual report for 2018/2019 at the IAT portfolio committee of Council on August 15, 2019, the executive director of human settlement, Muzi Sithole, stressed the report is a requirement by Cogta to report on the expenditure, challenges experienced as well as the remedies put in place to improve the performance on the MIG grant expenditure.
He told the committee that some of the factors that contributed to delays on projects were community objections, strikes, land acquisition process, unstable terrains and land encroachments issues. Completed projects include Etete internal roads in Ward 7, upgrading of Maphithiza road in Ward 12, Groutville surface roads and stormwater in Ward 9 and Groutville internal roads upgrades in Ward 10.
Thus far, Civil Engineering Business Unit was successful in reaching 100 percent expenditure for the 2018/2019 financial year.
According to the DORA allocation, the following amounts have been allocated to the MIG programme for KDM for over three financial years. – 2019/2020 (R51,6 million), 2020/2021 (R54, 5 million) and 2021/2022 (R58,5 million).
Cllr TK Gumede is the spokesperson of the DA on the Infrastructure and Technical Portfolio Committee.
