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Honourable Madam Speaker:

Honourable Councillor Rachael Isaac Madinda

Honourable Councillor Chief Whip of the Ruling Party Councillor Kolisi

Members of the Executive Mayoral Committee

Honourable Councillor whip of the official opposition Councillor Xolani Madyo

Councillor Ma Plaatjie

Fellow Councillors

Municipal Manager, Dr Pravine Naidoo

All Directors and Municipal Officials

Respected members of the Community in the gallery

My comrades from different levels

Members of media

Ladies and Gentlemen

Good Afternoon, molweni ngale mvakwemini Madam Spekear, on behalf of the Council I pass the condolences to Vuyo Mbuli’s family. He lived next door at Ndlambe Municipality he once visited this Municipality. He has made a remarkable contribution and all South Africans have aknowledge his skills of artitulation as both radio and TV presenter. Rest in Peace Vuyo Mbuli your departure has touched the Nation.

Madam Speaker let me officially welcome our Municipal Manager Dr. Pravine Naidoo who is no stranger to our town. He grew up here and is one of us welcome MUNICIPAL MANAGER we have a long way to travel lets shoulder on people of Makana are waiting for better services. We can pride ourselves as this council we now have a full complement of Senior Management and I must thank my Mayoral Committee in how we conducted ourselves during the recruitment of Directors and Municipal Manager. As we welcome the Municipal Manager I have received a letter from Dr Pravine’s Lawyers proposing a settlement on the outstanding case I would want the council to delegate me powers to appoint our own Lawyers to settle this matter once and for all.

Madam Speaker as this council to Local government for the Speaker fulltime position and we have received a letter from the MEC approving our application we are now awaiting for internal processes that will culminate into a gazette. We are about to enter on youth month, and I would want to have a number of activities on this month that will focus on youth development. Those activities will lead to a boxing and the opening of the indoor sport centre. I’m appealing to all directorates to plan activities for the youth month.

Young people are the majority of our population and they are the most vulnerable sector, we therefore as the responsible local government have to respond to challenges that are facing our youth, because a nation that does not invest in its youth its doom to fail.

We come together to reaffirm our commitment to the City and its resident, and to review our plans for the year ahead. We gather here not only to reflect on victories scored or problems encountered but to also answer the question: What more should be done to better the local government service delivery and take it to great heights?

In order for us to give a meaningful response to this question, we need to clarify what the relationship is, between our long, medium and short term planning. We need to shed light on where we want to be in the long term, our approach to development, and the objectives we intend to pursue in the coming financial year.

We have just completed IDP road shows where the communities were given an opportunity to voice their needs and critique us on how we are governing.

This process confirms their constitutional right of ensuring that people are governing. Whatever we do, we cannot over emphasise the need to address the challenge of poverty and underdevelopment. The work we do in municipality should be informed by the unshaken commitment to implement ideas that seek to ensure a fundamental transformation of our society. At the centre of these changes is the need to improve the quality of life of our citizens.

It is important therefore that in order to succeed, we require a strong partnership across all the three spheres of government. We need partnership with community, civil society organisations and business. Ours is a developmental government.

We need to actively use the instrument of Local government, the municipality, to improve the quality of life of all residents and citizens. Madam Speaker, maybe we need to pose the question: What are the government programmes and what informs them? These are:

• The ANC 5 year 2011 manifesto priorities

• The 10 point Local government turn Around Strategy.

It is important to note that by stipulating these we do not in any way suggest that the on-going work that has ensured continue transformation of local government and the improvement of the quality of life of people should be abandoned. Through the afore-mentioned, they are meant to be given more impetus and be carried out in a manner that suggests a sense of urgency.

The people of Makana , during the election campaign articulated to us quite clearly that they need value for money. We must therefore lift the bar. They also indicated that they want us to:

• Lead a municipality that is functional and responsive to the needs of our citizens

• Provide quality services and address the basics

• Continue with the agenda for transformation

• Communicate and engage citizens on the developmental agenda for the city and

• Partner with them in tackling developmental challenges

Madam Speaker, we also said fundamental transformation of the city cannot happen if we continue to operate in sub-optimal service environment. Hence, early in this term of office, we focused on improving service delivery provision. Based on the challenges we are facing, we collectively developed a comprehensive and integrated approach to service delivery.

Although a number of gains have been recorded around service delivery, we remain extremely concerned about some of the on-going challenges that impact on the quality of services that our residents are experiencing on a daily basis.

Madam Speaker: We acknowledge the billing and customer services remain source of frustration for many of our valued customers. We share their concerns. Therefore, billing and customer services remain one of our top focus is ensuring that we regain the trust and confidence of our residents. It is not acceptable for people to wait long periods of time to have calls answered. Rhodes University came to my office to indicate that they owe the Municipality about 8million and they are willing to settle but the want us to justify the account because their records are not reflecting the same amount. It seems we are unable to do that.

Madam Speaker we should make progress in improving customer interface, in strengthening our revenue collection service and restoring in the integrity of our billing. In conclusion Madam Speaker let us walk the walk and talk the talk. The further generations will recognise that our pioneers who were privileged to lead did not disappoint us.

I would want to close this by emphasising the importance of working as a team, because united we stand divided we fall.

TEAM

T- Together E- everyone A- accomplish M- more