For the year ending June 2020, the City of Cape Town managed to spend an impressive 90% of its Urban Settlements Development Grant (USDG) funding despite more than a third of the financial year being heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. USDG funding is primarily oriented towards services such as housing, informal settlements and basic services in some of the most vulnerable communities. It promotes equality and inclusiveness and is a critically important mechanism to enable redress.
This achievement amid an almost unimaginable pandemic shows the City’s resilience and dedication to continuing its work and service delivery to residents.
The Urban Settlements Development Grant is one of the largest transfers from National Treasury and is meant for the creation of sustainable and integrated human settlements that promote improved quality of household life.
Its purpose is to supplement the capital revenues of metro municipalities to implement infrastructure projects that promote equitable, integrated, productive, inclusive and sustainable urban development, and to provide funding to facilitate a programmatic, inclusive and municipality-wide approach to upgrading informal settlements.
This funding is used for, among others, increasing the number of basic interim services provided, access to public and socio-economic activities, increasing the number of serviced sites for indigent residents and those in need of assistance, providing individual connections and making more land available for informal settlement upgrading, subsidised housing or mixed-use developments.
‘These numbers definitively disprove the narrative that this metro does not serve the poor or vulnerable. One need only look at the figures to see that we are spending the money that we get on the people that it is meant for. The small percentage not spent is primarily COVID-19-related. We have also achieved some savings. The small percentage of money rolled over is due to material reasons a project could not be completed, for instance violence or volatility in the project area. It takes commitment, hard work, accountability and expertise to ensure that money allocated to improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable residents is spent and also that it is spent on what it is earmarked for.
‘The City has been improving its compliance and contract management operations over the last two years and a seven-year investment in our project management capabilities and systems which are reaching maturity. We are starting to see the fruits of these interventions. It is to the benefit of all our residents to have a highly functional, accountable and transparent municipality. Last week, the City of Cape Town was named the most sustainable metro in South Africa by Ratings Afrika. We aim to keep it this way by continuing to achieve our high payment ratio for rates and services, which pay for the delivery of basic services. In addition, we need to ensure grant funding, which primarily provides additional assistance to the most vulnerable, is spent responsibly and with the absolute intention of improving lives,’ said the City’s Executive Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Finance, Alderman Ian Neilson.
For the year ending June 2020, the City also managed to spend 96% of its total operating budget and almost 90% of its capital budget despite being severely impacted by the COVID-19 crisis and extended lockdown period. The City’s main mandate is to deliver basic services within acceptable national standards. To achieve such a high budget spend amid this crisis, shows the City is committed to fulfilling this mandate to the best of its ability.