THE recently elected leadership of the city has reaffirmed their commitment to working with the private sector to boost the local economy in order to create jobs and effectively improve the lives of eThekwini residents.
EThekwini Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda along with Deputy Mayor Belinda Scott and City Manager Sipho Nzuza, reassured attendees at the annual eThekwini CEOs Forum Programme on 12 September at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre, that the ease of doing business in the city would improve.
Kaunda has vowed to work with the business sector to take the city to greater heights.
“We strongly believe that sustained engagement with business is key to retaining business in the City and to ensure that the issues you are raising with us which impede your growth are addressed urgently,” he said.
Nzuza outlined the City’s proposed economic strategy, Shape Durban, which still has to follow council processes for approval before implementation.
He said the strategy will have three key focus areas, namely strengthening core assets through targeted densification and improved urban management, secondly improving the business environment by lowering of costs and the ease of doing business and finally to grow key tradable sectors through improved investment attraction.
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Kaunda stressed that consequence management would also be implemented for officials who neglected to perform their duties with speed and diligence, following a plenary question and discussion session where this issue was raised.
“We have told City Manager Sipho Nzuzu that we need to start implementing consequence management. We will give officials the necessary tools and support to do their jobs. But we will not allow projects and tasks to take longer than necessary to be completed,” he said.
He said the City saw it prudent to create this forum to collectively find ways of developing and growing the economy of eThekwini.
“The leadership of this new administration, at all levels of government, has committed itself to working with social partners including business, labour and communities, to ensure that we not only create new jobs, but work hard to protect existing jobs,” he said.
Councillor Scott,said they will be taking steps to ensure that businesses did not needlessly wait for weeks for approvals when it could be dealt with speedily.
“Mayor Kaunda and I subscribe to an open door policy. If officials are not doing their work and you have a city-related issue affecting your business, tell us. We are committed to a functioning city that will elevate interests of all its stakeholders including the business community high on its agenda” she said.
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