City to work with shack dwellers organisation

Durban - THE eThekwini Municipality plans to enter into an agreement with the South Africa Shack Dwellers International Alliance to raise Covid-19 awareness.

This was revealed on Tuesday at the city’s Executive Committee (Exco) meeting. It was recommended that “authority be granted to the City Manager to enter into a Service Level Agreement with the Community Organisation Resource Centre as a member of the South Africa Shack Dwellers International Alliance (SASDI) for the purposes of Covid-19 awareness sessions and profiling in informal settlements within the eThekwini Municipality”.

This was not the first time the municipality had entered into an agreement with SASDI. In 2018, the city said it entered into four Memorandums of Agreements with four organisations from the SASDI, which included the Community Organisation Resource Centre, Federation of the Urban Poor and Informal Settlements Network.

“The MoA will provide a framework of co-operation and facilitate collaboration between the parties to ensure that all bodies have access to expertise and agreed resources in areas of common interest based on their organisation priorities and development plan,” the municipality said.

The Daily News had at the time reported that shack dwellers movement Abahlali Basemjondolo, which had the most members in the Metro, felt sidelined by these memorandums with SASDI.

Also tabled at on Tuesday’s Exco meeting was the dire financial situation the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry was in.

In a report to the Economic Development and Planning Committee, it was explained how the Durban Chamber had been negatively affected by Covid as many of its members struggled to pay their membership subscriptions.

Despite the cost-cutting measures it implemented, the Durban Chamber found itself unable to continue with operations without financial support and fell on hard times.

The Durban Chamber said it had to reduce its staff complement from 42 in 2019 to 23 last year and this had helped reduce the payroll cost by 37%. Supplier contracts were another aspect that had been reviewed.

“The chamber relocated at the end of July 2020 to lower the cost of office accommodation, which would result in a 45% lower rental cost in 2021 compared with 2019,” the report said.

The report said the economic development cluster believed it was in the municipality’s interest to support the Durban chamber.

It was also believed that other business chambers could be affected by the same problems as the Durban Chamber.

“The municipality recognises the role played by the DCCI in representing the needs of organised business in the City and ensuring that eThekwini remains a region in which business can thrive. The municipality sees it necessary to have a fully functional chamber to support business and is therefore supportive of providing financial assistance.”

The Durban Chamber had requested R6.2 million, but was granted R5.2m. This amount was broken up to R3.1m for the 2021/22 financial year, and R2.1m for the 2022/23 financial year.

mphathi.nxumalo@inl.co.za

Daily News