MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

DA will soldier on in Baviaans Municipality

By

Unequal and disproportionate budget allocations to the Baviaans Municipality continues to cause major shorfalls which has placed the DA on the back foot in terms of service delivery.    This is one of the travails of being an DA-led municipality within an ANC-led provincial administration.  It is doubtful that the same budget constraints would have existed if this municipality was under the leadership of the ANC.

The problems in the DA-led Baviaans Municipality have been caused by a budget shortfall. The incorporation of Rietbron and other hamlets of the ECDMA region by the Demarcation Board without the necessary budget to service this area have placed enormous constraints on the municipal budget.

Despite various interactions with the MEC for Local Government, Mlibo Qoboshiyane, this municipality has only received some interim financial relief.  But the shortfalls remain and Baviaans continues to receive a disproportionately small allocation compared to the size of the municipality from the equitable share budget.

However the DA will soldier on the Baviaans Municipality and will not be overcome by difficulties placed in our way by the ANC-administration.  In fact, this municipality has eradicated the bucket system in the towns of Willowmore, Steyterville and Klipplaat;   Baviaans won the Local Government Vuna-award for 2013/14 for the performance in Local Economic Development (LED); vacancies in the municipality are less than 1% and there are no persons in acting posts; and Steytlerville was recently named the Eastern Cape winner for the “Town of the year” competition of Kwela and Kyknet.

The actions by the ANC simply makes the DA more determined than ever to win more municipalities in the Eastern Cape, come the 2016 municipal elections.

The people of South Africa deserve efficient government and the DA-led Western Cape government has proven that change is possible.

Such change, for jobs and good governance can be set in motion on May 7 in the Eastern Cape, by voting DA.

Athol Trollip

The following two tabs change content below.

Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.