Nomusa Dube, KwaZulu Natal’s MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, has congratulated the eThekwini Municipality for winning the Govan Mbeki Award in which the judging panel described as ‘unparalleled record for housing delivery’ for the second time.
The national Ministry of Human Settlements presented a R1 million certificate and gold-coloured brick trophy to the country’s R37 billion budget Durban municipality at its awards ceremony in Johannesburg at the weekend.
Dube, who presented the Manase Report into the forensic investigation into fraud and corruption of R500 million at the city hall last week, told the media that despite the forensic investigation she was still confident that the municipal leadership and officials were tightening up the gaps in its system and was working towards fighting fraud and corruption in its quest to achieve good governance, best practices and clean audit.
“Despite the enormous challenges the eThekwini Municipality faces in providing housing for almost half a million poor and jobless citizens living in sprawling informal shack settlements, the municipality has grabbed national recognition by being awarded the top award on two successive occasions," Dube said.
She further welcomed KZN Human Settlements MEC Ravi Pillay’s budget announcement that the municipality would build 10 000 low cost homes to relieve the community service-delivery pressure for decent housing. Durban’s mayor James Nxumalo presented the prestige prize to the city’s executive committee on Tuesday.
The MEC said that Durban as progressive, multicultural international city continued to attract larger migration to the CBD by job-seekers, including nationals from neighbouring strife-torn and poor African. An increase to its 3 million population and scarce land was exercabating the city’s housing backlog, and further pressurised by the mushrooming of the informal settlements that also illegally tapped into the city’s electricity and water resources.
“The Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Leaders congratulates the eThekwini Municipality for bringing high honour to the city and the province. Durban is one of the best run cities in our country and we are very confident that the municipality will spend its massive, pro-poor budget in building houses and providing electricity for marginalised communities and constituencies between now and after the 2014 election.”
“Mayors, municipal managers, financial officers and councilors can all play positive and constructive roles in delivering services to our people in their respective municipalities. The Govan Mbeki Award presented to the Durban and Newcastle municipalities should serve to encourage the rest of our municipalities to spend their budgets prudently on infrastructure development and start becoming innovative in generating revenue streams to keep their municipalities viable, accountable and profitable,” added Dube, who oversees 61 municipalities and 294 traditional leaders.
“Our municipalities should follow the lead set by these two award-winning municipalities in the rolling out of housing, water and sanitation and electricity supply projects.”
“As the government, we are serious about service delivery and the pressure is going to mount ahead of next year’s election and we cannot face the risk of compromising the whole local government system and losing the public’s confidence in our commitment to consistently improving this important sphere of local government that is at the coalface of our communities.”
