Nongoma town in KwaZulu-Natal gets R4m

Finance MEC Ina Cronje met the local business sector in Nongoma, where she announced that the provincial treasury had injected R4 million to assist the KwaZulu-Natal town with experts in infrastructure development.

The KwaZulu-Natal Finance Department has injected R4 million to assist with infrastructure development in the dilapidating Nongoma town.

This comes after the local business sector had complained that it was becoming difficult for them to run their business at the town due to a number of challenges which include ageing infrastructure.

As part of her budget consultation roadshows, Finance MEC Ina Cronje met the local business sector in Nongoma on Wednesday, where she announced that the provincial treasury had injected R4 million to assist the town with experts in infrastructure development.

The Provincial Treasury, through the panel of infrastructure experts (Infrastructure Crack Team), intervened and appointed LTE Consulting as Project Management Support Unit to build capacity and assist the Municipality with the Neighbourhood Development Partnership Grant projects.

“Our Infrastructure Crack Team is working with Nongoma municipality to unlock bottlenecks in infrastructure projects. We will always assist municipalities that need our intervention to unlock infrastructure projects.

“We are happy to announce that the road upgrade in town is near completion. The bus and taxi rank construction project is almost complete.

“These are exciting projects that assist to bring development in our community. This is a commitment that our government has made to improve the lives of our people,” MEC Cronje said.

Nongoma municipal mayor, Councillor Jeremiah Bhekumthetho Mavundla, could not hide his excitement about the development in Nongoma.

Mavundla commended the Provincial Treasury for its intervention, saying: “Nongoma is no longer the same since the Provincial Treasury’s intervention. We have witnessed the Crack Team’s interventions driving development to another level”.

He explained that prior to the interventions, the municipality had had capacity problems which prompted them to seek help because infrastructure problems were spiralling out of hand.

Deputy Chairman of Nongoma Taxi Association, Mthukutheli Mchunu, was overjoyed. He said the construction of the bus and taxi rank was a huge relief to the bus and taxi industry.

“We did not have space and used to park our vehicles all over the town causing traffic congestion. It was a total chaos. Today, our town is at peace and the traffic is flowing smoothly,” he said.

The MEC also heard that some businesses were affected negatively by late payment by some government departments.

MEC Cronje said the provincial government had committed itself to pay service providers within 30 days after the receipt of an invoice.