Farmers in Louis TrichardT and Naboomspruit have expressed their unhappiness with the lack of municipal service delivery by joining the 180 towns in SA which have already withheld rate payments to municipalities and have instead paid them into a trust fund. Jaap Kelder of the National Taxpayers Union said that the funds would be used to curb the deterioration of services and infrastructure and to improve service delivery to acceptable standards.
“We’ve witnessed a complete lack of service and misspending of residents’ money,” said Kelder. “Some 5 000 residents in Sannieshoff had their water restored in two days at a cost of R12 300 by taking it upon themselves to fix the ailing infrastructure. Prior to this, the municipality had requested the people’s patience when they were already without water for three days a week. It proposed laying pipes from one of the dams at a cost of R2 million.”
The chairperson of the Ratepayers Association Ockert Scherman added, “It’s now a critical time in Naboomspruit. Basic infrastructure such as roads, water and sewage works are at a point where serious maintenance is needed, otherwise the money from the residents will be lost.” S outpansberg chairperson Herman Smith said that the trust fund was not an excuse for residents to stop paying rates altogether, as a list with all the names of those who had paid their rates into the trust fund would be sent to the municipality every month.
Kelder said that it was not only in the rural areas where residents were fed up with the lack of service delivery – both Durban and Ekhuruleni had formed ratepayers associations. “The withholding of rates first started in 2005 and has increased exponentially since,” Kelder pointed out. – David Steynberg Contact Jaap Kelder on (011) 455 4408.
Less talk and more action needed on strategic plan
A review of the progress BEING made with the implementation of the strategic plan for agriculture is required as a matter of urgency, said agricultural economist and executive director of Sanlam Dr Johan van Zyl. peaking at the annual FR Tomlinson Memorial Lecture in Pretoria recently, Van Zyl said he believed South Africa is worse off now than it was in 2001 when the plan was formulated. H e added that this was despite the “relatively favourable agricultural conditions experienced over the past year or two”.
“With the exception of a few uncoordinated private sector initiatives and mainly ad-hoc government interventions and focuses, very little, if anything, has been done in most of the key areas, or with respect to coordinating the different issues,” he said. Van Zyldid, however, praise the plan for “consisting of several well-thought-through segments” which identified the problems, priorities and core strategies in agriculture, as well as sound implementation requirements that addressed the right issues. “The mere fact that a good and solid plan exists is no guarantee for success,” said Van Zyl. “has to be implemented.”
He said the results of the audit of the strategic plan should be made public so people could know how their performance compared with the objectives. “Bottlenecks must be identified and addressed – it won’t help to come forward with a new plan if the same bottlenecks are going to hamper its implementation,” he said, stressing that the focus should always be on implementation and not on changing the plan if it doesn’t work as quickly as initially intended. – David Steynberg
