President Cyril Ramaphosa has established a “presidential war room“ for eThekwini to work with the business sector to tackle water, electricity and infrastructure challenges facing the metro.
Ramaphosa announced the presidential eThekwini working group on Friday during an engagement with the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry NPC and business, saying the initiative was a partnership with the KwaZulu-Natal Growth Coalition.
The meeting was also attended by Ministers Pravin Gordhan (Public Enterprises), Bheki Cele (Police), Senzo Mchunu (Water and Sanitation), Kgosientsho Ramokgopa (Electricity) and Sihle Zikalala (Public Works and Infrastructure).
The latest Durban Business Confidence Index (BCI) Report for the fourth quarter of 2023, compiled by the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), found that business confidence had recorded a decline of 6.56 index points, settling at 38.12.
The majority of businesses operating in Durban revealed that eThekwini Municipality’s response to service delivery issues was slow and that this was affecting the business sector’s confidence in the City’s ability to deal effectively with such challenges.
Significant challenges at Transnet with the deterioration of the freight rail network and inefficiency at Durban’s port, the busiest in Africa, has also led to lost export sales and the fiscus losing revenue.
The ongoing load shedding crisis has also played a role in diminishing business growth and investment while adding to the country’s unemployment crisis.
Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, said the working group would be made up of ministers in the affected portfolios, working alongside the municipality and the business community.
Magwenya said the last presidential engagement had taken place in May 2022 and Friday’s session presented an opportunity for the president and the Durban business community to recap on measures that had been put in place to “grow the province’s economy and address the current water, electricity and infrastructure challenges”.
“During the interaction, the president and the ministers briefed the business community on various initiatives that are currently under way in assisting eThekwini and the province through the various interventions led by the national government.
“To accelerate the speedy resolution of issues impacting the eThekwini Metro, President Ramaphosa has set up the presidential eThekwini working group that will be made up of ministers in the affected portfolios, working alongside the metro and business.
“The working group will present their progress reports to the president regularly,” Magwenya said in a statement.
Andrzej Kiepiela of the KZN Growth Coalition said the working group was a welcome initiative as it would allow the president, ministers and other provincial leaders to work together on any direct requests from eThekwini or other municipalities.
“We are not going to just report on issues but also submit tangible solutions.
One of these that we discussed with the president is the water and sanitation challenge in eThekwini, where the national department and business agreed on a strategy that was approved by the eThekwini council last year,” Kiepiela said.
He added that despite the strategy being in place for almost a year, not much had been implemented.
“We said to the president that the strategy needs to be implemented as a priority.”
Professor Harold Ngalawa, professor of economics at UKZN, said it was important that matters that were reported to Ramaphosa were followed through.
“The president has the authority to set up a committee and what happens afterwards is another discussion. Business has a realistic understanding that they are reporting issues to someone in authority and the president can do or not do something about these issues,” Ngalawa said.
Economist Dawie Roodt said Ramaphosa’s main objective was to win the elections, adding that the promises made in the ANC manifesto were unrealistic.
“Business priorities include electricity and a working rail network, but it has lost confidence in government. They want a government that is consistent, does the basics by maintaining things and does what it says it will do.”
The Mercury