Take a look at what City of Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba and the administration’s leadership’s 10 new priorities for the new term are where a minimum of a 5 per cent economic growth is the main objective.
During a four-day lekgotla, a meeting called by government to discuss strategy planning, these were decided as the issues that would need the most attention over the next five years.
This will also be presented to the public through the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) in April next year.
Promote Economic Development and Investment to achieve a minimum of 5 per cent economic growth by 2021 based on:
- Â Inner city regeneration including key economic nodes
- Increased infrastructure investment from both the public and private sectors
- Â Working to cut red tape and improve ease of doing business in the city.
Improve service delivery (performance and culture) based on:
- Â Resolving the billing system challenges
- Â Fast tracking service delivery, especially to poor communities
- Â Developing pro-active maintenance and service teams.
Improve public safety based on:
- Â Increasing visible policing
- Â Addressing the shortage of 1 500 officers in Metro police
- Â Establish specialised units within the Metro police
- Reducing petty crimes and enforcing by-laws
- Focusing on drug abuse.
Pro-poor development based on, among others:
- Â Prioritising the formalisation of informal settlements
- Â Identifying land to be serviced before any human settlement takes place
- Â Increasing the delivery of housing
- Â Fast-tracking acquisition of buildings in the inner city for housing.
Responsive governance: Citizen-, customer-, business-friendly by:
- Driving a Service with Pride campaign
- Â Increasing responsiveness to billing problems
- Instilling best service standards by City employees
- Â Finalising the skills audit.
Good, clean governance with a focus on eliminating corruption based on, among others:
- Â Increasing forensic investigative capability and controls
- Â Absorption of most municipal-owned entities into the City after consideration of a thorough review and due diligence.
Meaningful redress:
- Â So that residents can live, work and play close to work, with leisure and cultural opportunities
- Â Efficient and effective transport connecting home, work, culture and leisure.
Preserving our resources for future generations based on, among others:
- Interventions to mitigate against water shortages
- Â Interventions to mitigate against electricity constraints.
Enhancing our financial sustainability by:
- Cutting wasteful expenditure on non-core functions
- Â Improving revenue collection
- Â Focusing on driving up capital expenditure investment in infrastructure.
Smart City and innovation based on:
- Enhanced access to information and communications technology including free Wi-Fi
- Â Focused improvement of technology equipment and software.
What are your thoughts on these priorities? Let us know by sending an email to editorial@caxton.co.za
