R10 billion to eThekwini Municipality infrastructure

The eThekwini Municipality has allocated about R10 billion to rebuild its water, electricity, and solid waste management infrastructure.

This comes as Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana announced a R3.33 billion grant allocation to eThekwini for trading services reforms over the next three years.

The municipality said the performance grant will be used to upgrade water and sanitation, electricity, and solid waste management so as to ensure that trading services are self-sufficient.

The city said the reforms for trading services will initially affect water and electricity for the first year, starting in the 2025/26 financial year.

“With respect to eThekwini Water and Sanitation (EWS) Unit, the city has adopted a Water and Sanitation Turnaround Strategy (TAS) and further developed the Business and Investment plan, and an Institutional and Governance Reform Road map.

“The latter has the six strategic pillars that underpin the reform of EWS into a ring-fenced commercial business unit, as echoed by Minister Godongwana in the recent budget speech,” the city located in KwaZulu-Natal said.

The strategic pillars included institutionalisation of single point of accountability; acquisition of management, technical and change leadership capabilities; improvement of the governance model and the financial ring-fencing of the Water and Sanitation Business Unit, among others.

Pursuant to the implementation of this strategy, the city said it intends to increase investment into priority capital and operational programmes that will help realise the envisaged financial turnaround, as well as stabilise the water and sanitation services to meet customer needs.

“The turnaround strategy, as adopted by Council, is in progress with 22% of the goals achieved to date. As the city aligns its budget priorities, the additional funds will be directed to the EWS TAS programmes that seek to reduce water losses, improve customer call centre systems, water metering, as well as intermittent water supply while reducing inefficiencies in all operations,” the municipality said.

The city through the Mayor’s Office will continue to engage all stakeholders on the EWS TAS, to ensure that the performance and outcome required are achieved.

“The R3.33bn incentive grant will therefore help the city gear up its existing resources to accelerate the reforms required and reposition the trading services to attract the required investments to improve the business, as per the business and investment plans that have been developed for the next five years,” the municipality said.

Additionally, the municipality has commended the indicative allocations, as provided in the budget, and commited to align them to its budget for approval in May 2025.