Municipality tackles evil trio

Mayor says focus is on poverty, unemployment and inequality

Thabo Mofutsanyana District Municipality says it will prioritise addressing the tripple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality in the coming year as it seeks to improve the lives of its residents through accelerated and quality service delivery.

Presenting her R108.8 million budget for the 2015/16 for the 2015/16 financial year, Thabo Mofutsanyana executive mayor Malefu Vilakazi said this year’s budget would mainly focus on building the local economy by creating more employment and sustainable livelihoods.

“In the next financial year we will intensify our efforts to push back the frontiers of poverty through our poverty alleviation programmes. For this purpose we have set aside R1.5 million to try and put hunger at bay in many of our households,” said Vilakazi.

Thabo Mofutsanyana comprises Setsoto, Nketoana, Mantsopa, Dihlabeng, Phumelela, and Maluti-A-Phofung local municipalities.

The mayor said in the coming financial year an amount of R800 000 has been set aside for promotion of sports and recreation, while R1 million goes to youth development which will be spent on addressing job creation through skills development as well as on campaigns against drug and alcohol abuse for youth.

She said: “Our budgets and programmes as a district municipality have been designed to… build the local economy to create more employment and sustainable livelihoods, improve local public services and broaden access to them, build more united, non-racial, integrated and safer communities, promote more active community participation in local government and ensure a more effective, accountable and clean local government that works together with national and provincial government.”

Vilakazi said the district municipality had allocated R2 million to education which would be spent on bursaries for learners.

“We will install a total of 65 000 solar geysers in houses in all the six municipalities here. About 15 000 geysers will be installed in Maluti-A-Phofung while other five municipalities will each get 10 000,” said the mayor.

She said this would also help create new jobs as the installation of the geysers was expected to be done by local people.

The mayor said over the past year, the district had recruited four civil engineering graduates to work on the rural road asset management programme as it sought to address the scarce skills challenge in the municipality. It plans to increase the number to seven this year.

“Job creation remains a top priority of the government and as a district municipality we are playing our part in job creation through our infrastructure development programme and expanded public works programme.

“So far in this current year we have created 644 jobs through various infrastructure projects that were undertaken in our local municipalities. With an additional 456 jobs created under EPWP,” she said.

Welcoming the budget, the president of the opposition Dikwankwetla South Africa Party Moeketsi Lebesa said: “We support the budget and hope it will make an impact in the communities.”

His sentiments were echoed by African Christian Democratic Party member Tefo Mosikidi who believed the budget would be effective in changing people’s lives. Mosikidi however felt that the R2 million set aside for bursaries was not enough.

“The amount is too little to cater for our children. Education is the only way that our children can turn around their lives,” said Mosikidi.