It is by now common knowledge that the Municipality has had a change of political office bearers. As the newly elected Deputy Mayor, I will be acting as Mayor until such time that council fills the vacancy in the position of Mayor.
Much has been said in the passages regarding this change of power, also aggravated by the fact that the council has placed the Municipal Manager and SED Corporate services under precautionary suspension.  I want to start by stating categorically that this new administration is by no means starting a “purge” of municipal officials at senior or any other level.  Any official or councillor spreading this message is being destructive to the morale of officials in our municipality and I therefore advise against it.
When council appointed me to act as mayor, they had given me a clear mandate to ensure that we speed up service delivery to our communities. This cannot be done with low staff morale.

I am well aware that for me to deliver to the communities, I need the support of every member of my staff, right down to the general labourer in the trenches, and therefore I am using this Mayoral message to communicate directly with my staff.

Just a quick perusal of the local newspapers will show us that the communities are grossly unhappy, and I acknowledge it.  Infrastructure is non-existent, and where it is existent, is failing miserably. The grass in the towns open spaces is overgrown, some beyond two meters high! Roads in Madadeni and Osizweni are at its worst state, where tar roads are scarce! Storm water drains are blocked, causing mini floods whenever it rains. Low cost housing in some areas is of such a poor quality, that all it takes for these houses to collapse is a simple rain storm.

I believe, putting it simply, that our communities deserve better! As the Mayor, I will be unable to serve these communities and address these problems without the support and assistance of my municipality, so I urge every one of my staff and councillors to join forces with us, to serve the communities of which we a part. It is time for us to change our attitude and start taking our roles seriously!

I have started some programmes and interventions, to assist staff to carry out these mandates. You will read in other parts of this newsletter that the Executive committee had set aside a R1000 000 to take care of the backlogs of grass cutting in the town. This should be finished within a couple of months, so that our grass cutting team can revert to their own programmes to keep our beautiful town clean.  I will be making certain that our capital budget, which should serve before council on the 31 march in a draft form, has a substantial amount that goes to purchasing equipment for our grass cutting teams so that we never reach this backlog again.

The Executive is currently filling in the vacancies in the Department of Technical services, starting with the SED so that our MIG funding and other budget amounts can be spent on speeding up the delivery of tar roads in Newcastle East and maintaining the infrastructure in Newcastle West. I have also given a directive to the Acting Municipal Manager, Mr Mswane, to incorporate a plan of action of the infrastructure problems in Newcastle West  in our budgetary process, so that we can attack these problems as soon as July 09.

I have also raised the issue at the Executive committee regarding the neglecting of duties of our District council in regards to our health and fire departments. Legislation is clear that these functions should be at district level, and the funding from National government goes with it.  The situation we find ourselves now in is that the funding goes to the district, yet we still provide the service.  We have now given the district an ultimatum, where after we are ready to approach the MEC for Local Government to either address the issue, or redirect the funding to us.  In this light, it is going to be difficult to fund the purchase of fire fighting equipment, although we are hopeful that we solve this impasse before the final budget is approved.

Of course I cannot forget the officials and workers who are trying their level best to provide us with some semblance of service delivery despite the huge lack of financial and human resources. To those people, some of whom put their lives in danger with faulty equipment, I say keep up the sterling efforts. On behalf of the people of Newcastle, I salute you!

There are many interventions that we have put in place, or plan to in the near future, making it easier for the municipality to fulfil its mandate. It is my intention to provide clear political leadership and direction, with the assistance of the executive committee and council, to make certain that the staff is able to deliver. The past few weeks have made me realise that the municipality has reached new levels of apathy, and it is my intention to turn this around, making certain that Newcastle becomes the thriving economic hub it used to be.  All I want to see is that our Municipality starts working.

So in conclusion my message is simple: LETS GET TO WORK!!!

“I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy – I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it”     ART WILLIAMS

Afzul Rehman

Mayor