New municipality, new wards
All wards will be delimited by August next year.
THE ward delimination process was officially launched by the Demarcation Municipal Board at the Ugu Sports and Leisure Centre on Tuesday.
The delimination process follows the decision to merge 15 KwaZulu-Natal municipalities by 2016 to reduce the number of local governments in the province from 61 to 54.
The MDB will hold public meetings with every municipality consulting the public on the new ward structure.
The public consultation process will formally start in the middle of January 2015 where the public will be given a chance to air their views regarding the new wards.
The process is expected to last until March next year and the assurance process will be complete by April 2015.
MEC for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta), MEC Nomusa Dube-Ncube said the process would be handled very sensitively.
“We are aware that communities will be affected by the new boundaries, that is why it is important to have a consultation process,” she said.
She added that the department was aware that there were concerns regarding the merging of municipalities. “I can assure that there will be no retrenchments due to the merging of municipalities. People will still have their jobs.” . She added that new municipalities would carry on with the core mandate of ensuring service delivery.
The formal delimitation of wards and the publication of the MDB’s delimitations will be gazetted for objections, allowing a 14 day period for public objections .
The publication of the final decisions of the MDB will be around August next year.
