Sub-council 21 has met most of its ward-budget targets for the financial year, according to its chairman Johannes van der Merwe.
According to his report, which was read out at a recent meeting, the sub-council, as of July 31, spent 97.8% of its ward-allocation funding for the 2020/2021 financial year. “This is the second-best performance of the 24 sub-councils,” claimed Mr Van der Merwe.
Sub-council 21 manager Lorrain Frost said: “We aim to achieve up to 100% expenditure of capital and operational funding annually which includes ward allocations, through working closely with the relevant line departments who implement the projects and closely monitoring expenditure.”
The sub-council’s pattern over the last three financial years has been steadily improving. Spend was 93% in 2018/19 and 96% in 2019/20.
However, Kuils River Civic Association president Isaac Jenecke criticised the workmanship on some of the projects the money was spent on.
“They need to improve on quality workmanship and value for money,” he said. “Not all their spending projects can be criticised. The country is in such a state, it is becoming a shifting goal post.”
The pavement tarring in Deshampden and the revamping of the Sarepta Civic Centre were good examples of money well spent, he said.
Conversely, he said, the Kuils River Shoprite Centre flea market’s bays had become unusable after block painting to demarcate the traders’ bays because social distancing there had become impossible.
In his report, Mr Van der Merwe also noted that staff members and ward assistants had conducted site visits in all three wards in the sub-council to log service requests, known as C3 notifications.
The electronic C3-notification system tracks complaints about broken street lights, exposed manholes, blocked drains, among other things.
According to Mr Van der Merwe, 23 033 of the C3 notifications were logged in the sub-council’s three wards in the past year: 7 172 in Ward 11, 8 714 in Ward 19 and 7 147 in Ward 108.
“We are noticing a vast difference in our sub-council from this initiative,” he said.
Last month, Moody’s rating agency downgraded Cape Town to junk status, citing decreasing revenue collection and increasing fiscal challenges.