The Gert Sibande District Municipality (GSDM) engaged its seven sister municipalities over the past week to present the Draft Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and Budget for comments and inputs.
This is a process which started in October 2019 when an IDP review was conducted.
During the engagements, member of the mayoral committee, leading the planning and economic development portfolio, councillor Bheki Buthelezi, explained the District was now at an integration phase where it is matching its financial resources for the financial year 2020/21 with the priorities identified and whereby stakeholders work out what needs to be managed for the projects to make an impact on communities before the district can adopt the final IDP and Budget later this month (May).
In all the engagements, the stakeholders agreed that the approved IDPs should be considerate of the effects of Covid-19 to an extent that budgets for planned projects, which may not take place due to the pandemic such as sports-related budgets, be committed to other projects.
The Gert Sibande Local House of Traditional leaders which consists of 17 traditional councils were also engaged on 21 May.
All engagements were by use of virtual meetings as these meetings were held during stage 4 of the nationwide lockdown, which prohibits large gatherings.
The District Executive Mayor, councillor Muzi Chirwa, presented the IDP and Budget to all the municipalities and according to the GSDM spokesman, Ms Bongi Ka Dube, valuable comments were made.
Further presentations will be made to the communities using local radios available within the district.
A summary of the draft IDP and Budget is available on the GSDM website and social media platform.
Communities are urged to make submit comments to their local municipalities.
Comments can be submitted through email, direct message on applicable social media platforms and via WhatsApp using the number 061 361 0952.
“The developmental agenda for any municipality must be determined by its residents and we, therefore, encourage communities to submit comments before 28 May,” Ms Ka Dube concluded.
