The Democratic Alliance (DA) believes it has all the solutions to the challenges faced by the Durban Metro.
The DA held a Ready to Govern Summit in Durban aimed at gearing itself to be part of a new government in KwaZulu-Natal after the May 29 elections.
The party deliberated on solutions and ways which could assist in restoring the City of Durban to its former glory.
The party, which is part of the Multi-Party Charter for South Africa, says there is a possibility that no political party will win an outright majority.
Service delivery
Party leaders in KwaZulu-Natal hosted government leaders from the DA-led Western Cape Province to share experiences in governance.
The poor state of service delivery in the eThekwini Municipality took centre stage with health, water and sanitation being the biggest concerns.
The municipality has been bombarded with a number of service delivery protest, with many communities facing water challenges for years.
DA’s premier candidate in the province, Chris Pappas, elaborates on key issues of the summit.
“We are not only about putting the manifesto forward but also about training and educating our public representatives to take over government once we get in. Now we have seven key priorities that we focus on, but the most important are jobs and growing economy. We know that we have huge joblessness and an unemployment problem in this province and to get the economy going, we need to be able to stimulate that. There are specifically enough key sectors which are agriculture, tourism, transport, logistics and energy. But on top of that, we can’t fix the economy if we are not looking at energy, water as well as crime which are the fundamental backlogs of getting our province moving again. The two key competencies of our province which are health care and education must also form the core of revitalising KZN and rescuing what we have.”
Water woes
The DA’s Water and Sanitation Mayoral Committee Member in the City of Cape Town, Zahid Badroodien, says desalination and water reuse could be the ultimate solution to water challenges faced by eThekwini.
Reforming health
Western Cape Health Minister, Dr Nomafrench Mbombo, encouraged provinces to strengthen health-care systems at district level to ensure improvement of health services.
Dr Mbombo says the introduction of the latest technology in hospitals also needs to be prioritised.
Fiscal control
Meanwhile, the DA KwaZulu-Natal leader, Francois Rodgers, says they will draw policies that will ensure that budget allocated is used accordingly.
“Most importantly is fiscal control, financial control – without money, there is nothing you can do. You can make all sorts of promises, but you need to control your financial purse, I think that is the most important thing. I think then what we take out of the Western Cape is that there needs to be policy certainty, you need to understand what your policy is, how to achieve policy implementation and have the political will to be able to implement those policies, whether it will be health, whether it will be education, no matter what provincial department – policy certainty and policy implementation and the political will to implement.”
Rodgers adds that in the next few weeks, their campaign will focus on rural areas where they have less support.
