THE Democratic Alliance welcomes the postponement of the Ugu Jazz Festival by Ugu District Municipality.
The decision is not only a victory for the DA, but for long-suffering residents as well. On numerous occasions the DA has called for funding to non-essential ego events like the Ugu Jazz Festival and Ugu Film Festival, to be cut. For the past seven years Ugu has expended R5.6 million on Ugu Jazz Festival alone. An additional
R800 000 would have been spent in 2018.
This money could have been utilised to either extend piped water to the marginalised rural communities or refurbish the deteriorating infrastructure, or both.
During a period of severe financial stress, the Ugu District Municipality must focus on servicing residents and not multi-million rand show projects.
A district municipality’s primary role is to deliver services and infrastructure required to improve resident’s dignity and spur economic growth.
Service delivery should be strengthened to all communities and to build a confident climate for investment and job creation. The previous years’ water outages has cost numerous jobs in our vital tourism sector.
With an unemployment rate over 40% within the Ugu District Municipality, we cannot afford further water outages that will result in the poor and marginalised losing their jobs.
The DA will continue to drive Ugu towards spending money on real services.
And it gets better when we focus on basic service delivery, and do our jobs honestly, and treat residents with respect and dignity.
COUNCILLOR LEONARD NGCOBO
Lower South Coast
