Boffie Strydom, Executive Mayor of West Coast District Municipality, tabled the budget for the 2023/-’24, 2024/-’25 and 2025/-’26 financial years during a council meeting held on Wednesday 24 May.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to uphold a stable and viable financial environment for municipalities and only 6% of municipalities in South Africa are categorized as being financially stable.
West Coast District Municipality (WCDM) supports the following objectives as highlighted in the National Development Plan (NDP) and works hand-in-hand with the Western Cape Provincial Government to meet various provincial objectives. These objectives include creating opportunity for growth and jobs; improve education outcomes and opportunity for youth; increase wellness, safety and tackle social ills; enable a resilient sustainable quality and inclusive living; and enable good governance and integrated service delivery through partnerships and spatial alignment.
The Municipality was recently nominated by Business Tech, an online publication, as the best-run municipality in the country for achieving clean audits for 12 consecutive years.
In addition to this the municipality was recognized by the Western Cape Government for Best Municipal Project, Coastal Management (Silver award) as well as Best Municipality (Bronze award).
Strydom underlined the importance of a sustainable financial environment as a key driver to ensure the delivery of core mandated services, as well as seeking further opportunities to enhance fiscal protection and generating new revenue to compensate for the devastating effects of a shrinking economy.
“I am also proud to highlight that staff and councillors will receive all contractual remuneration whilst many other municipalities in South Africa are in no position to pay salaries or able to provide a funded budget,” said Strydom.
Some of the key allocations of the municipality’s budget include: (as a percentage of total expenditure)
. Roads Agency: R182 630 999 (36.07%)
. Water Concession: R147 908 904 (29.21%)
. Fire Fighting: R49 854 917 (9.85%); and
. Environmental Health: R30 470 152 (6.02%)
. Tourism: R3 239 555 (0.64%)
. Environmental Health: R30 470 152 (6.02%)
. Fire Service Other: R38 883 910 (7.68%)
. Disaster Management: R3 467 722 (0.68%)
. Social and Economic Development: R4 452 859 (0.88%)
. The bulk water tariff will increase at 9% and will impact communities of Saldanha Bay, Swartland and Bergrivier.
