MIDVAAL. – Midvaal Local Municipality Executive Mayor Bongani Baloyi delivered his last State of the Municipality Address (SOMA) of the term last week.
Baloyi stated that people could say whatever they wanted about the Democratic Alliance (DA) run municipality, but at the end of the day, facts remain facts. “Progress has been made,” he said.
Baloyi was referring to comments usually made by the opposition parties who give unsubstantiated negative opinions about service delivery in Midvaal.
A confident Baloyi thanked the community of Midvaal for their continued support of the municipality, which always strives for the best in every aspect of its functions as local governance. Baloyi highlighted some of the achievements of the municipality. “For two consecutive years, we have received a clean audit, we have received Blue Drop status and we have been named the top municipality in Gauteng for the second year running.”
Baloyi added that some of the action plans adopted were the reduction of poverty, combating corruption and delivering better services to the people of Midvaal. “So far, we have created 115 jobs within the parks section for 6-month contracts and 25 jobs within the waste section for 12-month contracts. We also created over 900 jobs through the CWP programme last year.”
On housing, Baloyi added that RDP houses are built on prime land overlooking the Vaal Marina Dam, which would once have been the preserve of the rich.“One of our greatest commitments towards improving the process of service delivery, was the reworking of the IDP document. We worked to create a realistic, understandable document structured around forward planning, and designed in a way that provides for effective and efficient implementation. One of the methods we employed to improve the quality of our IDP document, was to strengthen our public participation processes.”
“We will continue making progress in Midvaal under a DA government” Baloyi concludes.
