The KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) MEC for Finance, Ms Belinda Scott officially opened a new Watercrest Mall with more than 120 stores, food court with 14 food outlets, Ster Kinekor with six movie houses. The developers injected more than R700 million towards this project in Waterfall outside Pinetown.
When delivering a keynote address, MEC Scott said that “This is a very exciting project for provincial government. It is the provincial lead project where the province has worked together with a developer to make sure that the project gets off the ground at record speed”.
“This project opens a huge economic opportunity for local people as well as business people in this area. This is the beginning of the upliftment of the local communities, particularly Molweni and surrounding areas. This also comes with massive employment opportunities, job creation as the construction phase saw more than 1400 people on site and 100 contractors with 32% local residents employed on site. Retail employment is now at 420 people employed and 67% of these people are local residents, which will increase with new shops opening up. Security and cleaning services contractors employ 67 people, of whom 88% are local residents”, said MEC Scott.
Mr David Rowles (owner of Rowles Property Group) said “This development is the brainchild of local family property business The Rowles Group and JSE listed property fund Acucap. The project has been six years in the making, planning, and finally it has come together. For me it is a big milestone that we can service so many of the community, from the job perspective, job creation, and bring retail facilities to the communities of the outer-west. This would have not been possible without the involvement of the provincial and local government involvement. We thank the involvement of the KZN Government through Economic Development, Transport, Treasury and eThekwini Municipality”.
Ethekwini Speaker, Cllr Logie Naidoo, welcomed this new development and said that “this mall build in the sugar fields is now increasing the rates base of the city of Durban also increasing our income as such, so that we can do the socio-economic interventions that we need to do in providing basic social services to our people”.
Through the provincial government involvement the recruitment committee which involved all the parties (Government, Community, and Developers) was formed to ensure that local community especially impoverished youth are the most beneficiaries of the permanent job opportunities and this has resulted to all parties working in solidarity for a common goal.
“We are happy to see many familiar faces being part of the employees in many of the shops in the mall. We will continue to work together with the retailers to ensure that the youth and the local residents are the most prioritised for permanent job opportunities” said the local Ward 2 councillor where the mall is situated, Cllr Sthembiso Mchunu.
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