32 Major Capital Programmes in the Medium-Term Capital Budget:
PROJECT / ITEM R’ m
Low cost Housing and Infrastructure 3 691.8
EThekwini Transport Authority (Including PTIS) 3 557.3
Electricity Infrastructure 2 757.0
Addressing Community Service Backlogs 1 311.2
Water Loss Intervention Programme 80.5
Roads Rehabilitation and Reconstruction, and New Access roads 1 574.8
Wastewater Treatment Works: Upgrades/Expansion 301.6
Northern Aqueduct – Water 533.6
Western Aqueduct – Water 138.7
Solid Waste Fleet Replacement 90.0
Ablution Blocks-Upgrade: Informal Settlements 709.3
Inner City Regeneration and Warwick Development 211.5
Town Centre Renewals – Nodal developments 212.5
To redress this, various strategies are in place including:
- the leak detection and repair strategy - The installation of pressure reducing values
- The installation of consumer water meters in rural areas - The installation of bulk meters to informal settlements - the regularization and registration of water connections - Upgrading of Industrial, commercial and institutional meters
The municipality is moving swiftly in addressing water challenges with the assistance of 159 community water agents as part of the city’s wide scale water conservation programme. Their role is to provide support to the unit by reporting water leaks and illegal connections and provide on-going education awareness. Consumers are continuously encouraged to use water more responsibly in view of the municipality’s “war” on water leaks and reducing the volume loss in distribution of water.
Initiatives to reduce the water loss are continuing and based on the intervention plan established, a system of performance monitoring and reporting for each of the identified interventions has been established. The municipality has also implemented the water amnesty project whereby citizens using water illegally could come clean and disclose their illegal water connections. Every possible measure will be taken to curb the water loss as this has an impact on the setting of an affordable water tariff. The effectiveness of the measures put into place will be reviewed on an on-going basis.
UNFUNDED MANDATES AND FUNDING REALITIES
Certain non-core functions and services which in terms of the constitution fall under the responsibility of National or Provincial Authorities are being provided by the municipality. These functions include the provision of Health Services, Libraries, Museums, and Housing. The reduction or non – payment of subsidies for these services require the municipality to allocate its own resources to make up the shortfall. The provision of housing is dependent on budget allocations by the Provincial and National governments and the actual funding received does not make it possible for the municipality to reduce the ever increasing housing backlog. These unfunded/
underfunded mandates pose an institutional and financial risk to the municipality as substantial amounts of own funding is being allocated to non-core functions at the expense of basic service delivery. Although much has been done to address the development challenges of the city, meeting targets will continue to depend on financial support from Provincial and to a larger extent National Government. Despite additional grants received, the levels are still not sufficient to meet unfunded mandates. Given adequate levels of funding, the city could meet the huge challenges it still faces.
In respect of the Health Services, the municipality and the Provincial Department of Health have concluded a three year service level agreement. This will assist with improved service delivery for better health outcomes within the municipal managed clinics.
The costs of unfunded mandates for 2017/18 are as follows:
R’m
Libraries 285.6
Health – Other than municipal health services 390.5
Museums and Heritage 61.9
Housing: New Development and Hostels 687.1
Formal Housing 35.0
1 460.1
34 SALARIES AND ALLOWANCES
In order to ensure effective utilisation of available budgetary provisions and contain personnel costs, this expenditure is continually being reviewed and the filling of all vacancies currently has a rigid process of authorisation prior to the recruitment process. As a result the percentage Salaries and Allowances of the total Operating Budget has declined steadily to a level of 26%. Whilst this percentage reflects a decreasing trend, there has been an increase in the number of posts and positions filled. A rationalisation of all vacant posts will be undertaken with greater scrutiny by the management services unit. Productivity assessments are on-going to ensure that all staff are accounted for, are effectively engaged and are adding value.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Human-induced climate change has been identified globally as one of the key challenges of the 21st century. As a result of climate change, the City faces a number of risks; these include changes in water availability, potential damage to infrastructure due to extreme weather events, threats to biodiversity and ecosystems, impact on agriculture and food security, higher energy consumption, and health impacts. The urban poor are likely to be most at risk. These impacts are likely to be compounded by indirect or non-climate change-related risks, such as population growth rate.
Extreme weather events and natural resource insecurity (because of climate change) add to the high challenges of cities trying to provide services to increasing numbers of people. In the face of high environmental risks, cities have to try to build local resilience (i.e. energy and resource security and food security), while negotiating regional and international partnerships to mitigate and manage the potential future impacts of climate change.
During peak storms, eThekwini’s coastline experiences unprecedented levels of erosion and associated damage to built-up areas within the coastal zone. The municipality is testing a flood warning system in preparation for the potential La Nina weather phenomenon, which brings floods. The new system will enable the city to give prior notification to all areas likely to be flooded and dispatch the disaster management teams immediately before the heavy rains begin. The city hopes to run its first pilot during the year and then go completely live by the end of 2017.
Due to well below average rainfall, the province has been experiencing a severe drought. This has impacted on the local dam storage levels. Despite recent rains, the drought situation still remains a challenge in eThekwini Municipality. However, a number of interventions have been implemented by the municipality to ensure that taps do not run dry. While some supply systems have recovered following rains, the Umngeni River System, which supplies water to the largest portion of the population, is under strain.
The municipality is pushing boundaries in coming up with a relief to water shortages. A 12- borehole pilot project has been proposed for areas worse affected by the drought. The cost per litre of water produced from the boreholes would be considerably less than what the municipality presently pays. Another drought mitigation initiative is groundwater mapping for the entire municipal area to be undertaken to assist in identifying streams and pockets of water that exist underground. To beef up eThekwini’s portable water supply to residents, the municipality is to pilot an energy savings and environmental friendly water system desalination technology demonstration plant.
In line with the municipality’s commitment to reduce its carbon footprint and use natural energy to produce electricity, the City launched its Solar Photovoltaic (PV) project. The project has seen the installation of Solar PV panels on five municipal buildings as a pilot project that aims to promote the use of embedded rooftop solar PV generation in eThekwini and reduce the dependence on the national energy grid. EThekwini municipality, as a leader in climate change mitigation and adaptation projects, launched the project to also provide opportunities for learning about PV installations. The lessons learnt will feed into policy development to expand the number of renewable energy installations. The pilot installations are expected to save the city about 427 MWh a year.
THEFT OF ELECTRICITY
Over the past few years the municipality is faced with a challenge of illegal connections, especially in informal settlements. Electricity theft has led to devastating and tragic consequence such as loss of life as well as damage to infrastructure. Legitimate customers also experience continuous outages due to overloaded circuits. Illegal connections are costing the municipality about R 150 million annually. Huge efforts are expended in curbing theft, however, the trend is exacerbated by electricity prices and a weakened economy. To mitigate this trend, regular sweeps, disconnections and removal of tampered installations are carried out. Furthermore, the electrification of informal settlements is expected to have a positive impact on the number of theft incidents of electrical cables. In order to minimize the impact of illegal connections, the city has introduced several initiatives and modifications to the infrastructure such as frequent removal of illegal connections and converting affected service connections from underground mains to overhead mains to minimize interruption of supply to customers.
To make sure that illegal connections are eradicated in the targeted areas, operations are carried out at least once a week. Other interventions include optimal network configuration, effective network maintenance and network loading, and installation of anti-theft technologies at substations. There are also customer awareness and educational programmes around safety, reporting theft of electricity and the consequences of connecting electricity illegally. As part of eThekwini Municipality’s continued fight against the growing scourge of illegal electricity connections, the City’s Electricity Revenue Protection Service has embarked on a massive illegal electricity meter crackdown operation. The clean-up process involves blocking all meters not linked to any connection or application number. In addition, Government has enacted harsher penalties for the theft of metals and damages to essential infrastructure.
HOUSING / HOSTELS
Increasing urbanization due to a growing number of people moving into the municipal area for better opportunities as well as land invasions is creating a challenge for the municipality and which increases the housing backlog. Often, settlements are established on unsuitable land, making it costly to service and construct homes. The municipality is dependent on the budget provision by National and Provincial departments to deliver houses. The limited budget allocation to the municipality has hindered the delivery of all housing programmes.
The current housing subsidy quantum does not cover the total cost of a house due to adverse geological and topographical conditions. As a strategy to deal with these, negotiations with contractors, consultants and suppliers have been instated in an endeavour to align construction with the subsidy quantum. The municipality will lobby the Provincial and National Human Settlements department for increased funding and budget allocation.
1.3.5 PERFOMANCE, ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES