Mashaba’s plan for Joburg outlined at Integrated Development Plan meeting

The final Integrated Development Plan meeting for Region B, which covers most of the Randburg area, was held on Tuesday morning at the Walter Sisulu Hall in Praegville.

Mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba presented his five-year plan for the City of Johannesburg at the IDP meeting which served as a review forum for the city’s plan for the year 2017/18.

Mashaba highlighted five pillars which he believes will create change to solve the City’s challenges. He will focus on growing the economy to create jobs, enhancing quality of life by improving service delivery, advancing pro-poor development, building caring and safe communities and instituting an honest and productive government.

Read A changed city reflected in next IDP

During his presentation, Mashaba emphasised that the government [the people who govern the City] must be accountable to the communities and as such, they need to act in a way that will benefit the communities. “You the community are the most important stakeholders. We, as government, spend months in council putting together a budget that is for our communities,” said Mashaba.

Mashaba emphasised that he wanted to promote economic development in South Africa to achieve a 5 per cent growth rate by 2021. He said this growth was absolutely essential to reduce the 30 per cent unemployment rate. “Anything under 5 per cent and we cannot undo the current unemployment rate,” said Mashaba.

“We need to recognise the challenges and then to achieve this 5 per cent growth, it cannot just be business as usual,” he added.

During the question and answer session in the meeting community members could ask any questions they had about the budget. Many questions were raised and Mashaba, as well as the members of the mayoral committee who were present, addressed the questions.

The final budget of R55,9 billion will be approved on 25 May.