Durban - The ANC in the eThekwini region believes the reconfiguration of different committees in eThekwini Municipality is necessary to improve service delivery to residents.
It announced the splitting up of some committees and the appointment of chairpersons during a media briefing yesterday.
Committees in the city include human settlements and infrastructure committee (HSI), which controlled the bulk of the city’s services and was in charge of infrastructure-related matters, economic development and planning, community services, governance and human resources and finance and emergency services.
The ANC announced yesterday that the finance and emergency services committee had been split.
It was previously chaired by eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda.
In terms of the changes, Kaunda will still chair the finance committee while deputy mayor Zandile Myeni, of the NFP, will chair the emergency services committee.
Key services including water, electricity and Durban Solid Waste, have been moved from HSI to the economic development committee.
The HSI committee will now only deal with human settlements, engineering, the eThekwini Transport Authority and roads.
It was announced that EFF councillor Thabane Miya would now chair the HSI committee.
The EFF and the ANC in eThekwini recently announced that they had a working relationship and the chairmanship of this committee seemed to be the result of that arrangement.
The ANC said the reconfiguration of the HSI committee was necessary to improve the co-ordination of services, pointing out that investors with projects often asked about water and electricity before undertaking these projects and having these services under economic development would make sense.
ANC councillor Thembo Ntuli has been named as the political head and chairperson of the economic development, planning and trading services committee.
Detailing the changes, ANC regional secretary Mandla Nciki said: “We have listened to constructive criticisms and comments on various social media platforms and in the mainstream media. These have revolved around what the people of eThekwini believe are weaknesses and strengths of their municipality.
“As the governing party we undertake to ensure the co-operation of all political parties in the interest of service delivery. We have therefore agreed on the reconfiguration of the municipal committees in order to sharpen and strengthen our service delivery machinery,” he said.
DA councillor Thabani Mthethwa said the changes did not bring any solutions for the people of eThekwini.
“We are still going to discuss this in our caucus, but this is internal manoeuvring by the ANC to get one over their coalition parties and to keep control of the city’s budget.”
IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi said if the changes were for the benefit of residents, the IFP was in support of it.
However, he added that if the moves were to “satisfy certain political obligations, that is unacceptable”.
Nkosi said the relocation of trading services to the Economic Development committee did not make sense.
“To me it says they do not trust the EFF because the previous chairperson handled the whole cluster. But we must congratulate councillor Miya. It’s a huge responsibility that he has been given as there is a housing backlog in eThekwini, and we must congratulate Myeni as she leads the cluster that includes metro police,” he said.