Over the past week, Gert Sibande District Municipality (GSDM) engaged its seven sister municipalities presenting the Draft Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and Budget for comments and inputs. This is a process which started in October 2019 when an IDP review was conducted.
During the engagements, Member of the Mayoral Committee leading the Planning and Economic Development portfolio Cllr Bheki Buthelezi explained that the District was now at an integration phase where it is matching its financial resources for the financial year 2020/21 with the priorities identified and whereby stakeholders work out what needs to be managed for the projects to make impact on communities before the District can adopt the final IDP and Budget later this month of May 2020.
In all the engagements, the stakeholders agreed that the approved IDPs should be considerate of the effects of COVID-19 to an extent that budgets for planned projects which may not take place due to the pandemic such as sports related budgets be committed to other projects.
The Gert Sibande Local House of Traditional leaders which consists of 17 Traditional Councils was also engaged on 21 May.
All engagements were by use of virtual meetings as these meetings were held during stage 4 of the nationwide lockdown which prohibits large gatherings.
District Executive Mayor Cllr Muzi Chirwa presented the IDP & Budget to all the municipalities and valuable comments were made.
Further presentations will be made to the communities using local radios available within the District.
A summary of the draft IDP and Budget is available on the GSDM website and social media. The communities are urged to make comments for their local municipalities.
Comments can be submitted by email, direct message on applicable social media and via a WhatsApp number 061 361 0952.
The developmental agenda for any municipality must be determined its residents and we therefore encourage communities to submit comments before 28 May 2020.
