Today marks two years in government for the Democratic Alliance (DA)-led coalition in Nelson Mandela Bay.
The DA and its coalition partners have made great strides in making progress in the City and we remain focused on delivering services to the people.
News that a new coalition arrangement – designed to move a motion of no confidence in in Executive Mayor Athol Trollip – has been agreed to which includes the EFF, UDM and the ANC does not detract us from the work that we seek to do.
Any opposition party that seeks to hand over the reigns back to the ANC for maximum looting and minimum delivery is not putting the people of NMB first. They would be putting themselves and narrow political interests first.
The systematic looting of the Municipality’s coffers at the hands of the corrupt ANC brought the city to its knees and as a result the voters of NMB removed the ANC from office. Some of these opposition parties now seek to defy the voters and hand the City back to the ANC and defy the will of the people of NMB.
Working together with our coalition partners we have put the people first and passed two consecutive pro-poor budgets.
A positive reflection of our financial position is the recent Moody’s credit upgrade to Aa1 as well as the R179 million reward from National Treasury for spending 100% of our USDG funding. At the end of the 2017/18 financial year the City spent more than 96% of USDG funding, including the extra allocation received from Treasury.
Our USDG grant has been used to deliver services to the City’s vulnerable communities, including:
• Making progress eradicating bucket toilets;
• The provision of serviced sites;
• The upgrade of 5 informal settlements;
• Tarring of roads; and,
• The installation and retrofitting of public street lights
The City is now liquid with over R2 billion in the bank, has a steadily rising collection rate and achieves some of the best capital expenditure in the country.
Some of the highlights from the recently passed 2018/19 budget are:
• R2.2 billion for the provision of a fixed amount of free basic services to indigent households;
• R138.5 million on resurfacing and rehabilitation of roads;
• R167.9 million on electrification of informal households;
• R72.7 million on public lighting;
• R49 million on upgrades or development of public spaces; and
• R45 million for the acquisition of land for housing development
Since the DA-led coalition took over, the successes under the leadership of Executive Mayor Trollip speak for themselves.
We have eradicated 9046 bucket toilets of 16 317 we inherited, provided 2188 RDP houses and uncovered R615 million worth of corruption and irregularities. The Thusong Centre in Motherwell was completed and opened within a year after R12 million was spent. A total of 5439 EPWP jobs were created and 646 streetlights installed in a number of areas.
The Shot-spotter technology installed in Helenvale also proved to be a great success. Within 90 days of its installation, gunshots were reduced by 90%.
IPTS busses are on the road and we’ve also built the highly secured Clearly Park Bus Depot.
The DA, along with its coalition partners, will continue to serve the people of NMB, even if opposition would like to see the municipality collapse under ANC corruption. We are not enticed by the frills of public office. We want to work for the people who have voted us in to change their lived realities. If other parties wish to vote out the coalition government, seeking to loot public money, we will continue working for the people of NMB even in opposition benches as we have done in the past.