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Give More to Grow More – Loyiso Dotwana

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The Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber President Loyiso Dotwana has called on the business community in the Metro to mobilise more volunteers and resources to get the local economy growing again.

He was delivering his speech during the Chamber’s Annual Banquet held at the Sun Boardwalk Hotel and Convention Centre, on 18 November, where over 800 guests attended the aptly themed Casino Royale event. The event remains one of the highly sought-after engagements on the Metro’s business calendar as it provides an opportunity for local business leaders to reflect on highlights from the year and also to strengthen and expand their networks.

Loyiso Dotwana
Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber President Loyiso Dotwana

This year’s event was hosted by well-known Soul musician Loyiso Bala, who provided the night’s entertainment alongside Television and Radio personality, Rouchelle Liedemann.

Dotwana encouraged businesses to plug into the Chamber’s Task Teams, Clusters and other resurgence initiatives.

“Key too is the forging of strong partnerships with stakeholders such as local government, NGOs, the Nelson Mandela Bay Civil Society Coalition and government agencies to all work together to do the right thing for our city and our people. There is no discrimination on our part. We will partner with whoever shares our common values of operating with integrity and are aligned to our goal of getting the city to work again,” he said.

“Let’s continue to build a groundswell of support so that we can resurge our city to unlock its true potential.”

He further highlighted some of the challenges the city has been grappling with such as the aftermath of an ongoing pandemic, a water crisis, rolling blackouts, truck hijackings, cable and catalytic converter theft, including vandalism of the city’s infrastructure. Parallel to this has been the political instability since 2016, which has led to a breakdown in the enforcement of Municipal by-laws and security, a lack of investment in critical infrastructure, mismanagement of key resources and a general breakdown in the functionality of the Municipality.

“In the past year, we’ve worked with three different Mayoral Committees. The most recent of which came into power a few weeks ago. So far, it has been very encouraging to see the collaborative approach, which the current Executive Mayor Retief Odendaal and Deputy Mayor Khusta Jack have adopted. We hope that their number one focus will be on fixing the Municipality so that service delivery can be restored,” Dotwana said.

In her speech, Chamber CEO Denise van Huyssteen expressed her heartfelt appreciation to those who have gone beyond the call of duty to help the Chamber achieve its set goals.

“As you know, the Chamber is a non-profit organisation and as such, we rely heavily on the voluntary involvement of our members in driving our initiatives and for providing resources, sponsorship and other support,” Van Huyssteen said.

She said that collectively, the team had managed to achieve the following milestones:

  • Implementation of a targeted Adopt A Leaks intervention – which has saved the Metro over 1.5 million litres of water per day.
  • Partnership with the Gift of the Givers to ensure that communities have access to water
  • Adopting 75 schools to fix leaks and install rain water harvesting measures.
  • Adopting 17 sub-stations to safeguard electricity supply to manufacturing operations.
  • Establishing geographic clusters in Perseverance, Deal Party, Struandale, Kariega and North End.
  • The establishment of a mega cluster to address major common issues which affect all the clusters.
  • Establishing a renewable energy cluster which groups 23 of the biggest manufacturers in the metro find a common solution to support the grid and reduce carbon footprints.
  • The strong positive outcome of our legal case against NERSA.
  • The initiation of an Eastern Cape Climate Change Coalition to drive the readiness of the Metro to deal with both droughts and floods.
  • The establishment of an Entrepreneurship Desk which has over 100 businesses registered with it.
  • And the successful completion of the Exporters Development Programme and Enterprise Development Programme

“I want to thank our members, stakeholders, Board Members and staff for their support of the Chamber. We remain committed to working with them to take positive action to retain investment and jobs in Nelson Mandela Bay.”

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Alan Straton

Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and Broom Mechanic at MyPE
Passionate about Port Elizabeth and definitely NOT packing for Perth. Alan's ethos is epitomised in the words of Nelson Mandela; "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society. If need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." See more articles by Alan.