Saul announced his provincial government will pump millions into the municipality. He says his government decided to cough up half a billion rand for urgent infrastructure development.

The municipality has recently been plagued by sporadic protests. Saul says R215 million will go towards urgent maintenance work to fix potholes, as well as sewer and water leakages. Another R53 million has been signed off to purchase land next to the N12 for housing.

“As Provincial Government we are concerned about the service delivery challenges facing the Sol Plaatje Municipality, and the resultant discomfort and anger among residents in the city. For this reason, we have been engaging in a series of meetings with the Sol Plaatje Municipality and the District Municipality to formulate an immediate intervention to address the service delivery backlogs and challenges,” he adds.

He says this intervention has as its primary focus the improvement of quality of services, and to put in place a turnaround strategy to speed up and improve service delivery.

Here is how the half-billion will be spent:

From this amount, R215 million will go towards urgent maintenance work on fighting potholes, sewer and water leakages, as follows -

R180 million will be used towards roads maintenance to deal with resealing and potholes; R 20 million will be spent towards addressing water and sewage leakages;An amount of R15 million will be spent on cleaning the city R 71 million towards Temporary Residential Units for the residents that were affected by the recent rainfalls and floods. Of this amount, R44 million will be spent in the Sol Plaatje municipal area.

R144 million will be allocated to the groundbreaking Hull Street Social Housing project. This will go a long way in addressing the fundamental challenges of human settlement and the Apartheid Spatial planning. R37 Million will go towards the establishment of 2 933 sites.

Out of this, a total of 1 314 will have services installed.R53 million has been signed off for the purchase of land next to the N12 leading to Johannesburg for mixed housing delivery. In addition, a purchase agreement has been signed for the Eskom building to the tune of R 16 million to address social housing needs.

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