eThekwini’s economy among the top performers

eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda has painted a glowing picture of the City’s economy, saying it has created and absorbed thousands of people in different jobs.

Kaunda detailed the performance of the municipality while delivering his State of the City’s address on Tuesday.

The mayor’s address covered a wide range of service delivery matters including work being done to improve water and sanitation, roads, electricity and energy services, inner-city development and addressing homelessness.

However, opposition parties criticised the mayor’s speech, saying it was rehashed from last year. They said he made new promises while failing to detail which promises made last year had been kept.

Kaunda praised the City’s performance in economic development, detailing the efforts to create job opportunities.

He said one project will be launched in July that will create 6 000 jobs.

“Next month we will be launching a new and ground-breaking job creation initiative ‘Ijob Ijob – Ingawe Lento, Asisebenze!’ Through this we want to drive job creation programmes across the city that will have an impact and bring meaningful change to beneficiaries,” he said.

Kaunda said the City was encouraged by the Statistics SA report which showed that eThekwini has the lowest unemployment rate among metros.

He said, as of December last year, eThekwini is estimated to have created 4 422 full-time jobs through its capital budget initiatives. The Expanded Public

Works Programme generated 2 035 jobs, and the Public Employment Programme had 40 projects benefiting just over 4 000 beneficiaries during this period.

“Due to the development incentives policy which provides up to a maximum of 100% of rates rebate to investors, the city has attracted more than R17 billion of investment which has resulted in a total of 14 000 permanent jobs and over 13 000 construction jobs,” he said.

The mayor said they were attracting jobs in the service industry, with eThekwini becoming a preferred investment destination for Global Business Services (call centres).

“Through collaboration with Business Process Enabling South Africa, we have trained and placed 1 585 youth from previously disadvantaged communities .”

In partnership with the National Treasury and through the Jobs Fund, they have rolled out phase 3 of the Informal Economy Support Programme, supporting 114 small businesses with funding.

He said eThekwini wanted to recruit 800 graduates in the building environment to assist the City in enforcing the building by-laws, and 300 Urban Improvement Precinct ambassadors who clean, protect tourists and ordinary citizens, and act as guides when needed.

“We have heard the cries of our young graduates who have found it difficult to access employment due to lack of job experience. As a caring and responsive municipality, we have decided to do away with the ‘experience requirement’ for all our entry level jobs. In addition, people who are over 35 years of age are still eligible for employment in the city.”

DA councillor Mzamo Billy said there was nothing new in the State of the City address. “Our view is that the mayor’s address was a copy and paste from his speech last year.” Alan Beesley of ActionSA agreed. “He is clearly out of touch with reality. The reality is that under the mayor and ANC leadership, service delivery in the City is at an all-time low and infrastructure is collapsing.”

The Mercury