Jozi, services are going to cost you, but don’t worry, the fire engines will rock

Joburg residents will have to cough up more to live in the city, but will get some benefits in return for increases on rates, taxes and municipal services.

Finance member of the mayoral committee Jolidee Matongo delivered the city’s annual budget to the council chamber on Tuesday.

The R73.3bn budget will on Thursday be handed to acting city manager Floyd Brink and the executive management team to deliver on the commitments.

Announcing the 2021/2022 financial year increases, Matongo said electricity costs will be hiked by 14.59%, water and sanitation by 6.8% and refuse removal by 4.3%.

Property rates will go up by 2%.

Among improvements planned for Johannesburg is the rollout of 1,000 free wifi hot spots, with big infrastructure-improvement projects on the cards for Orange Farm, Ivory Park and Kliptown.

In these areas the plan is to replicate the successes achieved in Soweto, which was transformed from a dusty township and labour dormitory into an economic hub equipped with recreation facilities, tarred roads, Rea Vaya bus services, swimming pools and decent shopping centres.

And we will be getting proper fire engines. Not just those grass-cutting machines we have at the moment – real, proper, big fire engines because those little fire engines that you call out now can put out a veld fire.

—  Jolidee Matongo

“And we will be getting proper fire engines. Not just those grass-cutting machines we have at the moment — real, proper, big fire engines because those little fire engines that you call out now can put out a veld fire, but [are] not equipped to deal with a really big fire on the 20th floor of a burning building,” Matongo said.

He added that a recent visit by executive mayor Geoff Makhubo had shown that the living conditions of people in flats and old-age homes in Eldorado Park are “inhumane”. He said R102m has been budgeted to upgrade them.

Work is also set to begin on a shelter for victims of gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide. It will be based in Orange Farm, but other shelters for displaced people will be established across the city.

Group finance has been allocated R6bn to implement an online Electronic Bill Presentation Portal.

This is intended to expand engagement with customers through smart and virtual platforms and cut down on billing queries and non-delivery of customer statements.

“We are also currently dealing with the disastrous insourcing of security personnel, which has ballooned our security costs from R576m to almost R1,3bn in the 2019/2020 financial year,” he said, explaining that proper planning and feasibility studies need to be done for staff to feel safe in the workplace.

Another new initiative is the Citizens Relations and Urban Management Department, which will ensure that 10 people in each ward are permanently employed by the council.

“The 10 people, who must be residents of the wards themselves, are to be responsible as front-line workers to identify service-delivery failures in wards and work with our entities to speedily resolve them,” Matongo said.