30 January 2004 Press Release Johannesburg celebrate 10 years of freedom On the occasion of the official opening of Council, the Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg delivers a state of the city address. This year, in addition to an assessment of the city's performance against strategic priorities and the programme of action for the new calendar year, we pay attention to the ten years of freedom in Johannesburg. During this period, we all witnessed democracy in action, the hastening of socio-economic development and the expansion of service delivery. In Johannesburg we remained dedicated to our mandate to fight poverty, provide free basic services, build our communities into non-racial areas, and create a better life for all. Service Delivery Approximately 250 000 households in the city have benefited from the city' s R450 million social package. A further 31 million free kilolitres of water estimated at R78, 8 million is being subsidised. This represents a remarkable improvement to the R36, 3 million spent in the 2002/03 financial year. Over 46 million kWh per household to the total value of R15.8 million were provided for the period July to 31 December 2003. We have reached an agreement with stakeholder that Eskom will from the January 2004 provide free 50 kWh to eligible households in Soweto, Braamfisherville, Finetown, Portjie, Protea Glen Ext2, Dooronkop Ext3, Ivory Park, Ebony Park, Diepsloot and Orange Farm. We continue to provide 100% rebate on assessment rates on properties less than R20 000. Pensioners who qualify on properties worth more than R20 001 will receive a further 40% remission. Council has spent a total of R152, 014 million for the first six months of the 2003/4 financial year to assist residents who are confronted by poverty. We indicated previously that all informal settlements would be formalised within three years. In this regard, we have formalised about 47 settlements and the city has entered into partnerships with its utilities to ensure that electricity, roads, water and sanitation projects related to housing are accelerated. Some of the settlements that will benefit from this work are Leratong, Matholesville, Driezik Ext4 &5, Vlakfontien, Finetown East, Weiler's Farm, Kanna Park, Orange Farm and Vlakfontien West. The projects will benefit over 20 145 households. The 2001 Census, when compared with the 1996 Census, show that our city has made huge strides in service delivery. We have improved household access to water, sanitation, housing, telecommunications and education. For instance, 269 000 additional households have electricity, 320 000 additional households receive a weekly refuse removal service, 231 000 additional households have flush toilets and 260 000 additional households have access to piped water on site. HIV/AIDS The HIV/AIDS epidemic remains a key priority for the city of Johannesburg. Our overall approach is underpinned by intersectoral collaboration and building partnerships. We seek to mobilise the community towards non-discrimination and non-stigmatisation and to promote openness and disclosure of HIV status voluntarily. The city provides care services such as HIV counselling and testing services, syndromic management of sexually transmitted infections, free male condom and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission. Home-based care is provided in collaboration with NGO's and other community groups. We aim to provide 80% of people who are ill with AIDS and other chronic illnesses with care. Public Safety Crime prevention, safety and security are improving in the city. In hindsight, the establishment of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Department (JMPD), which now has over 1600 officers on the road; and the installation of surveillance cameras has dramatically increased safety levels. In February, the JMPD will receive a further 40 new vehicles to be used by the special patrol unit. Our collaboration with the South African Police Services and the South African Defence Force greatly contribute towards making Johannesburg a safe city. While on this issue we wish to recognise great strides made by the community of Hillbrow in their excellent behaviour during the festive season. On behalf of residents of Johannesburg, I thank this community for their matured conduct. We also continue to improve the delivery of quality emergency services. During 2003, an additional 104 qualified fire fighters were appointed. EMS serviced for instance a total of 97 833 emergency calls of which approximately 10% were related to fire and rescue incidents and 90% related to ambulance incidents. Fortunately, the City negotiated a new agreement with Gauteng Provincial Health Department for the provision of a new ambulance fleet. The city has since received 40 new ambulances that are already operational. But it is not only locally where EMS makes a difference. The City's Special Operations Response Team, a team of highly specialised rescue experts, has since their inception already been called upon to assist with the earthquakes in Algiers and Iran, and the devastating fires that ravaged the Mpumalanga province during August last year. This team ensures that the City has the capacity to mitigate any rescue situations that endangers its citizens. EMS also conducted 13 383-fire safety inspections and evacuation drills, particularly in the inner city, to increase bylaw enforcement in line with the City's key priorities. Economic Development Joburg 2030 is the lodestar for economic development in the city of Johannesburg. In this respect, a variety of initiatives are being implemented. We have signed a memorandum of understanding with higher education institutions (HEIs) located within Johannesburg, including the University of the Witwatersrand, Technikon SA, which has merged with UNISA and Wits Technikon and RAU, which have merged to form the University of Johannesburg. The City of Johannesburg also has a partnership agreement with CIDA City Campus, which is an inner city campus providing an accredited business degree to disadvantaged students. CIDA City Campus seeks to educate informal traders in financial literacy and business skills. To date, 100 traders have been trained and a further 300 are to be trained over this year. Area based regeneration strategies were developed for the inner City as well as Nasrec, Soweto and the Randburg CBD. Its purpose is unlock economic potential and to fast track the economic repositioning of these areas, by an expansion and a diversification of the residential market as well as the social/institutional infrastructure. The city has established an investment facilitation function that takes responsibility for business liaison and the marketing of Joburg 2030. It is envisaged that this function will expand over the next two years. Urban Regeneration Urban regeneration, and particularly the revitalisation of the inner city, is a key priority of the city. As we know, years of urban decline and neglect of the inner city cannot be turned around overnight. The City of Johannesburg leads the regeneration process in partnership with provincial government, business and civil society. Our work with our partners in the inner city is starting to transform our city centre, its business nodes like Braamfontein, and our inner city neighbourhoods into a world-class city centre. Through the Inner City Task Force, and in partnership with other enforcement agencies, we are beginning to win back the inner city from the slumlords " and the criminals who seek refuge in those conditions " so as to provide ordinary citizens with a safe and secure environment. Other initiatives include the opening of Drill Hall to the public is in March 2004. The development of Drill Hall was made possible through the City of Johannesburg investing R10 million. The landmark Nelson Mandela Bridge that has created easier access into the bustling Newtown. In 2004 a new project in Newtown will ensure parking for 500 cars. The former Johannesburg Fort and prison will soon be the new home for the Constitutional Court where 11 men and women safeguard citizens' rights enshrined within South Africa's constitution. The Gauteng Provincial Legislature will be establishing a government precinct and purchasing buildings to an estimated value of R 300 million as it consolidates and upgrades properties around its head office. This year we will continue upgrading of gravel roads to surfaced roads in Soweto. R87 million will be used to complete, among others, the tarring of gravel roads in Moroka/Rockville, Orlando East and Pimville as well as Dlamini. Within the next two financial years, all work relating to gravel roads in Soweto shall have been complete. Other major capital works will include the construction of: -Emndeni Bridge to link the Soweto and Protea areas -Mooki and Koma Streets in Soweto -Cleveland Link Road to enhance the accessibility to the City Deep Dry Port, and -Resurfacing of the M1 motorway from Corlett Drive to Houghton Parks The impact of the operations of Johannesburg City Parks is visible across the City. Key projects in the coming year would include the landscaping and development of the Botanic Gardens, the development of the Midrand and Diepsloot Regional Cemeteries and the planting of 3 000 trees in disadvantaged areas. Several parks, across the city will be upgraded and new playground equipment will be provided to all these parks. In Thokoza Park, local residents who play a key role in ensuring that the park is kept clean and safe have established a group called Friends of the Park. Development Planning The Department received 16 552 building plans during 2003 with a total value of R5, 6 billion. A total of 13 794 buildings plans were approved (83%) and the department averaged a turn around time of 24 days to scrutinise building plans and approve 34% of buildings plans submitted per month within 30 days. Members of the public will be able to track their building plans through the Internet as from February 2004. The city is also continuing fight posters and signage. A total of 169 828 illegal signs and posters were removed during 2003. A total of 849 town planning contravention matters were referred to the Courts and 237 Court Orders obtained in favour of the Council (28%) whilst only one case was lost. Decisions are awaited on the balance of 591 cases (72%). We will also ensure improvement in development applications turn around times: -Rezoning: 9 months - 8 months -Consent: 8 months - 5 months -Building plans: 57 days - 30 days Current assessments indicate that that these targets will be reached by the end of the financial year. Transportation Amongst other major project to improve the city's transportation, we will invest about R100 million to improve Baragwanath Public Transport Facility. The project is intended to upgrade and develop the current taxi rank and trading area to provide a better facility for busses, taxis and informal traders. The completed project will make provision for ±430 taxis holding, 25 long distance taxis loading, ±250 local taxis loading, 20 busses and ±350 informal traders. Billing No city can sustain itself if it cannot raise its own revenue. In our case, most of our revenue derives from rates, taxes and service charges " only a small component is received as intergovernmental transfers from national government. Therefore, our ability to raise our own revenue effectively, will enable us to be self-sufficient to deal with the challenges that we confront. The establishment of the Revenue Shared Services Centre (RSSC) will enhance the quest for more effective management of revenue. There is significant progress in this regard: top management for the RSSC has been appointed and the recruitment process for the Board of Directors of the RSSC has begun and it is envisaged to be completed by March 2004. The collection rate achieved for December 2003 was 92.1%, which is an admirable achievement given that December is usually a very poor month for collections. The 12-month moving average collection rate to the end of December was 86%. We remain determined to improve on this figure, and revenue have been instructed accordingly. The city has a substantial effort underway to cleanse its billing data. In particular, there is a unified data project that aims to give the city a single view of all property transactions. After making substantial progress by electronic matching of our data with other databases, the project team is now in a phase of manually checking specific problem areas. Furthermore we are currently finalising a service level agreement between revenue and the utilities. As a quick win, the Billing department has re-engineered its processes to improve on our customer service. The objective of these initiatives is to manage to quantity and quality of information transmitted between the city and utilities. This will reduce the number of billing queries submitted to Council. Customer queries We are in the process of adding additional capacity to handle customer queries. The additional staff are currently being trained and will be deployed to the various People's Centres. The more skilled staff are to be deployed to focus upon more complicated queries. Furthermore, we are currently automating important billing functions (including refunds, finalisation of accounts and land transfers) to enable us to significantly reduce query resolution times. Customers may also use the internet/e-mail facility to forward their meter readings. We are also in the process of finalising a project that will permit conveyancing attorneys to apply for clearance figure electronically and by doing so save costs and reduce turnaround times. Importantly, we will shortly be rolling out a system in terms of which a query resolution officer will be held accountable for the management of the query from first receipt to final resolution. Each consumer will receive the contact details of a dedicated consultant who will work on his or her account. This should reduce phone calls to a call centre or sitting in queues at Jorissen Place or a regional office. Pre-arranged sessions with your consultant should become the norm, and calls to call centre should become the exception (for after-hours emergencies). Our annual Customer Satisfaction Survey will take place during the month of April 2004, to provide the consumers the opportunity to rate our service. Revenue scored 72% in the 2003 survey. Credit Control Revenue has over the past year been escalating its credit control activities, after many years of weak and insufficiently effective credit control. To date we have handed over debtors worth R5 billion to attorneys for collection. We are aware of the implications of historically weak credit control activities, and accordingly continue to invite customers who have arrears on their accounts to come in, discuss repayment programmes and enter into formal arrangements for the repayment of arrears. Revenue will actively seek a win/win situation. Such arrangements will avoid the inconvenience of having services terminated or adding legal costs to a customer's bill. Auditor-General's Report Council is aware that we are seeking to achieve clean audit reports for entities of the City of Johannesburg. Five of our entities have in fact accomplished this objective already. Five others have qualified audit reports. Only three entities, namely City Power, Joburg Water, and the core administration received disclaimers for the year to June 2003. Council is also aware that, even in these cases, significant progress has been achieved in specific areas, namely, confirmation of inter-company balances, reduction in unallocated receipts, management of fixed assets (especially new assets) and the finalisation of financial procedures and controls. Furthermore, there are several positive aspects of the financial statements for June 2003. For example, the accumulated deficit declined by R100 million, and capital expenditure was R1 346 m (which was 90% of the budget). We have worked very hard to inform the media just what the position is on these matters. Special media briefings were arranged, and our officials spent considerable time answering questions on these issues. It is therefore disappointing that certain media chose to ignore the story during December last year, and instead produced uninformed and hostile reports earlier this year. Operation Clean Audit Report An unqualified Auditor-General's report is envisaged by 2005. Progress has been made in this regard, as is evident from the Auditor General's report for the year to June 2003. However, considerable work remains to be done, and the target will stretch our officials. The project plan addresses many specific issues raised in the various report of the Auditor General. More fundamentally it seeks to re-establish the control environment around all accounting transactions, to prevent such queries from emerging in future Auditor General reports. A few months ago, the city commissioned an independent, scientific study to determine the views of our residents on the performance of the city in relation to service delivery, governance and billing matters. The study, conducted by Palmer Development Group found that: -over 70% of all residents were satisfied with the work of the city -over 50% of residents believe that services have improved -58% of residents have confidence in Joburg as a city -overall satisfaction with basic household services and public safety is 60% Although isolated voices in the media and certain opposition parties have portrayed a negative view of our efforts over the last couple of years, this study has unambiguously demonstrated that the majority of residents " drawn from leafy suburbs, township areas and informal settlements " share our belief that development and delivery have indeed taken place and hold an optimistic outlook for the future of our city. This is not to suggest that we whitewash our problems and difficulties in effecting delivery, but that a balanced view will reveal that we have transformed the city, that we have improved service delivery on the ground, that we actively consult and engage our stakeholders and that we have equitably addressed the needs of our communities. HIGHLIGHTS OF 2004 -Opening of the new Constitutional Court on Constitution Hill will take place this year -Winner of the Soccer World Cup bid will be announced. We are confident that a number of important games will be played in Johannesburg Should South Africa win the bid -Former president Nelson Mandela will be awarded the Freedom of the City -National election Regards Mbangwa Xaba Tel: 011 407 7524 Fax: 011 339 5704