Women have their say in shaping IDP draft plan

April 2 saw a full house of young and old women from various districts across Johannesburg’s seven regions at the Brixton Multipurpose Community Centre to directly interact with the city’s leadership.

The Integrated Development Plan (IDP) draft for the 2024/25 fiscal period aims to enable broad participation to address many of the service delivery issues that affect residents in their respective communities.

Councillor Margaret Arnolds, the speaker of council in the City of Johannesburg, chaired the session, starting by welcoming all the attendees. She stressed that the IDP meeting was a crucial opportunity for Johannesburg women to have their voices heard in shaping the draft IDP and more importantly, to interact directly with city officials as their input is crucial. She encouraged active participation through their engagement.

Read more: City calls on residents to participate in the upcoming IDP public meetings

The theme for 2024/25 IDP plan and budget is ‘The People’s Plan: Our City, Joburg – A Place We Call Home’. Executive Mayor, councillor Kabelo Gwamanda presented the draft IDP which outlined key challenges affecting women, including inadequate women’s economic empowerment programmes, gender-base violence and femicide (GBV), women’s safety, insufficient support for the elderly women amongst others. He also gave a list of current partners/stakeholders in other issues affecting women, in the city. He also touch-based on the 2024/25 review of rates policy, and proposed rates tariffs.

Following the mayor’s presentation, women participants engaged with city leadership, raising burning issues ranging from unemployment, women safety, GBV and femicide and lack of shelters.

Other issues included open land that creates hubs for criminals, issues with water supply, lack of clinic facilities, cleaning of sports and recreation facilities by City Parks and enforcement of by-laws.

One of the attendees, Musa Mbewa, raised the concern that these meetings seem to be a box ticking exercise since they always come with the same problems annually that do not get resolved by the City. She also asked that the presentation be made in other official languages, including documents thereof, to accommodate uneducated and the elderly.

Felicia Thusani from Sol Plaatjie in Region C, commended the City for getting involved in the zama-zama saga, citing that the crime and shooting is getting reduced. However, she was concerned about the hijacking of new housing allocation where beneficiaries do not get their houses.

Read more: How the IDP, budget and tariffs will affect you

Felicia Nkosi from Yeoville made the house breathless for a minute when she raised her concern as a property owner that is losing value on a daily basis because of crime, streetlights cables being stripped in broad daylight, and foreign national street vendors bribing metro police to operate illegally. She became very emotional and refused to be stopped according to allocated speaking time. “I am aware of those incidents and want to assure you that we are working on them” said the MMC for Public Safety, councillor Mgcini Tshwaku.

In response to the issues, mayor Gwamanda is said to have acknowledged all the input based on the challenges women are facing and other issues that were not cited in his presentation. He assured everyone that the respective MMCs will respond and act on their concerns accordingly.

MMC for Health and Social Development, councillor Ennie Makhafola shared contact numbers for treatment centres in all the city’s regions, for drug and abuse challenges. She informed all women that there are stakeholder and planning forums that are unique to each region. MMC for Development Planning, councillor Eunice Mgcina said the City of Johannesburg will attend to the issues that the community members raised and urged community members to blow the whistle on all transgressors who build structures without permission or approval from the City.

Related article: Mayor addresses residents at IDP meeting in Brixton