The Urban Improvement Precinct programme, coming soon to Ballito. My views on this. Your point is valid, if we want to get something done, we probably will need to join this project. But you are not very clear on how this money will be spend. Maybe I can do some research and the answer will come to me. When local authorities originated eons ago it was obviously done because simple villages needed some common infrastructure such as connecting roads and it was probably thought that some people will work the fields to produce food and meat and they will contribute to others who will build the roads so that everybody dont need to do the same thing. And bodies were formed to coordinate this effort. The key factor here was that everybody was visible, the food producers, the road builders and the committees, they all just lived down your street. So there was accountability, nobody could hide. At some stage we had a fair accountable setup in this country. All towns had their own councils and the major was a visible guy that didnt get a salary and neither did the councillors. But with political reform it was argued that greater municipalities will be more efficient as they will have shared resources and to a great extend eliminate duplication of those. What it did not say was that the management of these resources would be moved out of reach of the public and that the accountability would to such an extend diminish almost to the point where it doesnt exist. So now we sit with a situation where it is illegal for a vulnerable resident not to pay his rates and taxes and the law will severely deal with those but it is somehow not a crime to withheld the accompanying service because the elected service provider is invisible and out of reach and unaccountable. This creates a convenient vacuum where it is easy for this untouchable council to call an emergency meeting in which they decide on rich rewards such as housing and luxury vehicle benefits for its members without fearing any consequence to their deeds, least of which from the electorate that put them there. Let us leave this here for now. So what the Urban Improvement Precinct programme is actually doing or seems to be doing, is what I described in terms of the founding of original council or committees above. We are indirectly trying to recreate the efficient councils that we originally had and we need a tax base for it but with one difference, we are going to leave the parasitic cancerous and largely inefficient political structures intact. So politicians and corrupt officials will retain the structures through which money can be leaked while we have to pay another tax just like another tax is now raised by private means on roads in Gauteng for roads that the taxpayer already paid for. So my question is, how will this extra private tax be spend that is being soft soaped as protection to our investments? Who benefits because we know that even not for profits have paid people and I suppose the promoters of such a scheme also benefits? Can they be 100% trusted. Will all financial statements be published and be broken down to enough detail that we will know that it is not a carefully structured get rich scheme for some with a little lollipop on the side to numb the minds of a naive and insecure public? I am not convinced that the press do enough to critically look at the local councils and associated municipalities with an unscrupulous eye to expose what they are doing to the public. I have been trying to make the newspaper aware about the dangerous road in Sheffield Beach for a very long time. I know for a fact the Ilembe major must be using that road on a daily basis. But we in office have blind eyes and the press seems to be very selective in their reporting. To push an agenda like this with vigour and make such a strong case for it without actually exposing all of the fat cats and the line of accountability behind the original problem, amounts to nothing more than journalistic cowardice. It is exactly this lack of exposure to the core that have protected those behind the scenes that have led to the recent collapse of the shopping mall in Tongaat. Hindsight is such a convenient excuse, isnt it? If we could actually have a non for profit organization that would actually spend full time on exposing the fat corrupt cats and inefficiency and take them to court and all the bodies (including the press) that are supposed to deal with corruption in this country and also make sure they do their work right up to the Public Protector on a continuous basis, I would be much more motivated to pay something extra like this. But it is painful to pay another toll when you know a large sum of money that you pay every month is going through holes and there are laws in this country that obliges you to do so. I would also like to know what the motivation is of the promoters of this. I have seen a lot of strange things happening in this small town since I got there and I dont necessarily belief that the noble ones that pose as our saviours are always that noble.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 13:28:16 +0000
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