Ready for Joburg ward committee elections
Get ready to vote for your ward committee members.
JOHANNESBURG residents are reminded to ready themselves to return to elections – and to vote for their ward committees in all of the city’s 135 wards between this January and February.
The elections will be conducted by the Independent Electoral Commission on three Saturdays: January 28, February 4 and 11, at venues still to be announced.
The City of Johannesburg maintains that ward committees play an important role in municipal affairs, in that they assist democratically elected public representatives to carry out their mandate.
“Our process of educating citizens about the ward committee elections through workshops, went quite well. We concluded the workshops on Sunday, November 13, last year.
“During the campaign, Johannesburg citizens showed interest in the elections. Even our local councillors requested us to extend the workshops to certain areas, in order to reach more communities.
“After the workshops, we were inundated with calls from people requesting nomination forms. We had only printed 10 000 forms in the beginning. We had to go back to print 10 000 more. This emanated from the adverts we ran with a number of media organisations,” said Patrick Nhlapo, the City’s Deputy Director of Community Participation.
More than 3 800 candidates have been registered. Ballot papers will be printed as soon as the candidates’ details have been verified and the papers signed off.
The sectors are: housing, transport, public safety, finance and economic development; environment and infrastructure services (City Power, Johannesburg Water, and Pikitup); community development 1 (sports, culture and youth); community development 2 (women, faith-based groups, community-based organisations and non-governmental organisations); health, development planning and urban management.
Elected ward committee members will be entitled to a R1 000 monthly stipend and a cellphone allowance. Although ward committees have no legal persona, they serve as advisory committees in support of ward councillors. Under the leadership of ward councillors, they facilitate meaningful participation in council affairs and in the resolution of residents’ problems, over and above other stakeholder engagements.
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