Durban — The eThekwini Municipality mayor, Mxolisi Kaunda, said women, youth and disabled persons should be prioritised in the City’s tender processes.
Kaunda was speaking during the City’s full council sitting at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre, yesterday.
He said the City had a meeting with young people in business, which was one of the inroads the City has been able to achieve.
“The tender committee expressed its concern on what they viewed as an insufficient number of tenders being awarded to youth and vulnerable groups.
“It mentioned that the percentage of section 36 tender awards is still slightly high, with emphasis being the aforesaid section is to be utilised only for emergency purposes, that stringent measures be put in place, to improve expenditure patterns and expediting the process of finalising tender processes for tender awards to be made within a reasonable time frame.”
He said a proposal was made that the Metro Police Unit be capacitated through the establishment of a dedicated team of peace officers to handle the summon services function, including increased number of vehicles to enable swift operations by the officers when executing their duties.
Also, that various platforms to issue summons be explored, such as email facilities as part of cost containment measures.
“An indication was given that this will also lead to a reduction of traffic fines amount being written off, as the municipal dedicated team will be able to follow up on the summons issued to achieve accountability.
“Given the undertaking to put a new tender in place, it was said that a need exists to rescind a council decision where approval was given to engage individuals across the eThekwini region to undertake the summons services for the Metro Police Unit.”
It was iterated that a need exists for the municipality to start a new tender process and engage a service provider to support the Metro Police Unit to issue summons to traffic offenders.
However, the DA submitted that the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI) sets out the minimum standards regarding accessing and processing of any personal information belonging to another.
A concern was raised about the details of vehicle owners and their residential addresses, having to be administered by independent people, with mention being made that this posed a risk of contravening the POPI Act.
It was proposed that the head: metro police be authorised to engage summons servers who will operate as independent contractors to personally serve summons relating to traffic offences across the eThekwini region, in line with by-law charges in terms of section 54 of the Criminal Procedure Act No.51 of 1977, as amended, it being noted that individuals to operate as summons servers would be identified from the respective wards to circumvent travel costs.
Also, during discussions, it was noted that the budget statement report reflected that the municipality had been put under section 154 administration by the provincial treasury, the reason given being a lack of sense of urgency on service delivery.
Most of the opposition cited that the cash collection rate of below 100% reported monthly was viewed as failure by the municipality to implement vigorous revenue collection strategies.
The amount lost due to under-collection was also queried. Reservations were expressed regarding the water distribution losses, which were reported to be 57.38%, as well as escalating costs of this function.
A submission was made that water challenges were attributed to the failure of the municipal water infrastructure, with reservoirs being cited as no longer having the capacity to handle the bulk water supplied by Umgeni Water.
An issue of tariffs was also raised, with some members being of the view that tariffs were still high, citing the slow economic growth following adverse effects of the triple challenges that have befallen eThekwini.
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