The City’s renewed strategic focus on area-based management promises Durban ratepayers an improved inner city environment.
The City Manager Sibusiso Sithole has set up a task team to develop area-based management plans to deal with inner city and secondary central business district management which includes the appointment of an inner city champion to co-ordinate inner city management.
This announcement was recently made by Sithole during a full day workshop attended by the City’s top management. During the workshop, which discussed ways of improving area-based management in the City, Sithole formally established the task team and urged its members to speedily move from conceptualisation to detailed implementation of plans that will make a meaningful difference in the inner city.
“The task team must map where we should start, targeting areas that are our harshest realities in the City,” said Sithole.
City departments that make up the task team are Metro Police, Durban Solid Waste, Safer Cities, Finance, Informal Trade, Planning, Water, Electricity, Engineering, Transport, Parks, Legal, Fire, Health, Environmental Health, Housing and Communication.
“We need to move away from silo-based resource planning by focusing on the main objective and building a core team to deliver on the objective,” said Sithole.
In addressing the priority areas, Sithole directed the task team to thoroughly interrogate issues negatively impacting the inner city and secondary central business districts, develop an action-based and results-oriented plan and deliberate on the institutional arrangements that will enable the success of this intervention. The prioritisation will be based on each area’s needs.
High-level priorities cited by Sithole include cleaning, security, street trading and social challenges.
Sithole said cleaning is a major priority and the team should review the City’s allocation of resources to the cleaning function and investigate other means of augmenting existing resources to ensure a clean inner city.
Security was identified as another priority and Sithole urged the team to assess the security needs and develop a plan to ensure the provision of adequate security in the inner city.
“There is a need to address the over subscription of street trading in the inner city and assess the street furniture and overall services that should be provided to street traders as a way of enhancing our environment and keeping it in clean, orderly and conducive,” said Sithole.
He added that the team should develop strategies to reduce street trading activity in over-traded areas by providing alternative trading spaces.
The issue of social challenges requires more attention and Sithole urged the task team to extend the current work that is being done by City to profile social challenges in the inner City.
“It is crucial to understand the challenges and introduce programmes to resolve such issues sustainably and in partnership with City stakeholders, more especially residents,” added Sithole.
