His current contract is set to expire on August 31.
“I still have no official indication on what the future holds,” he said.
Van Vuuren was appointed as administrator on April 23 last year and in the past 15 months took enormous strides to lift up the dilapidated municipality.
He had a three-plan approach to turn the municipality into a self-sustainable entity.
The first was the short term stabilisation and empowerment of the municipality, which has been completed.
This stage focused on staffing and relationship matters with the aim to enable the municipality to be responsive to the huge demands they face on a daily basis.
The medium term plan saw interventions through activities and funding in the budget and Integrated Development Plans (IDP) and intervention strategy.
The focus in the IDP and resulting budget and Service Delivery and Budget Implementation Plan (SDBIPS) is on creating municipal sustainability and address immediate priorities of maintenance and service delivery. The IDP, budget and SDBIPS have been approved for 2013/14, the process to have a fully responsive IDP and resulting budget for 2014/15 is nearing finality.
The value of this approach was that different directorates’ activities as contained in their SDBIPS were integrated and coordinated around strategic themed programmes.
The long term plan, that caused plenty sleepless nights for Van Vuuren, was to rebuild the infrastructure base and allow for growth in the municipality.
This was executed by a five key programme.
To focus its activities, within the framework of the intervention strategy, the municipality has refocused its activities on five programmes containing nine sub programmes to address the key areas of service delivery and building of a healthy environment and enabled institution.
These programmes were integral in building on the initial stabilisation of the municipality and have been designed to address priority issues of service delivery in a way which will be rolled over into the post intervention period. The value of this approach was that different directorates’ activities as contained in their SDBIPS were integrated and coordinated around strategic themed programmes.
These programmes are:
*The mayoral cleaning and priority services programme focused on issues of roads, waste, potholes, electricity and sewage based on the priorities identified by ward members. These programmes have been implemented with assistance of the community and at the end of June were 80% complete. This provided momentum to the work on restoring the city hygiene and living environment, and normal maintenance programmes in the post intervention period should suffice to keep the situation under control.
*The city infrastructure rehabilitation programmes focussed on rehabilitating city infrastructure and attend to issues of water, electricity and roads. This programme consists of five sub programmes that included a street lights and high masts programme, securing and repair of electrical kiosks initiative, a potholes and access roads rehabilitation programme, the acceleration of capital infrastructure projects for 2014 and a Rand Water improvement programme.
The total city light network was to be repaired by May and additional highlights targeted to be installed by July. Continuous further vandalisation and damage to the network however resulted in some 20% of work completed to be out of commission again, and this delayed the full roll out to all areas.
Teams were dedicated to safeguard electrical installation against accidental injury by community members and from vandalism in the securing and repair of electrical kiosks initiative. This programme was 50% completed end of June.
Various district, municipal, community and private sector projects aimed at improving the road network were launched in the potholes and access roads rehabilitation programme.
“Important in this was the empowerment of communities to assist in addressing problems in their wards and also the collaboration of the private sector. End June 50% of the programmes has been executed despite a very late start and the losses of repairs made during 2013 as a result of the heavy rains. More than 30 000m² of potholes were repaired but the challenge remains big,” said Van Vuuren.
Fast tracking the delayed Municipal Infrastructure Grants (MIG) projects and ensuring that 21 sanitation, electricity, fencing, roads and lighting projects to a value of R86-million formed part of the acceleration of capital infrastructure projects for 2014. Internal capacity has improved to in future manage these programmes effectively.
By the end of May the Rand Water programme succeeded in cleaning all reservoirs which had a huge impact on the quality of water.
“However, the municipality was frustrated by the slow movement in the programme,” Van Vuuren commented.
*Restoring Emalahleni as city of choice was done by rehabilitating, with community and private assistance, cultural and public spaces and by restoring law and order and enhancing the revenue stream through Operation ‘Luma’. These are continuous rolling programmes but momentum was gained by the establishment and empowerment of a law enforcement unit and the launching of visible law enforcement drives in the city, as well as with the restoration of the civic centre gardens, hoisting the national and municipal flags and cleaning of parks.
*The municipal urbanisation programme focused on the improvement of the regulating environment within which the private sector as well as government can initiate developments (sub programme sustainable urban development drive) and the informal settlement basic services programme progressively pulling in informal areas in programmes of cleaning the environment, providing rudimentary services and jointly planning on relocation or formalisation.
“Both of these programmes are rolling over as themes but have created a critical momentum to address some of the most critical problem areas in the municipality,” was Van Vuuren’s comment on the programme.
Financial sustainability and clean audit drive with main elements to ensure a clean audit and to increase the revenue base through installation of consumer meters. This aims to move the municipality from a disclaimer to a qualified or better position by 2015/16 and to ensure all residents are correctly metered by 2015. The importance of this programme was to establish the institutional mechanism to deal with audit issues on a continuous basis and to prepare in time for audit verification.
It is now wait and see if Van Vuuren will be here to oversee the long-term plan.
On July 26 he posted on his Facebook that he is looking for a new name for the Facebook page he has been using to communicate with residents. This form of communication proved to be very valuable to residents.
“This page must outlive me and a name you can associate with is needed. Please inbox if you have any ideas,” he wrote.
Up to date suggestions for the name of the Facebook page were ‘Emalahleni municipality news’, ‘Emahlaleni Munisipaliteit’, ‘eMalahleni affairs’, ‘Roep ’n probleem hoek’, ‘Desk of the municipal manager eMalahleni’ and ‘Witbank sonder krag en water’.
Van Vuuren cautioned that the recent problems with water, electricity and waste so many have experienced have been a set back and he emphasised that there is still a long road ahead. He is however still confident that the municipality is on the right track.
