Mayor
Youth, Gender, HIV/AIDS and Disability Programmes
In executing its mandate and meeting challenges facing society
in an endeavour to create a better life for communities, the
office of the Executive Mayor has created positions which
have already been filled given the urgency and importance
of the mayoral programmes.
Society is plagued by issues relating to youth, the disabled,
women and the elderly. Interlinked to these are issues pertaining
to the HIV/AIDS scourge that is ravaging society at a pace
of unimaginable proportions, crime and the high rate of unemployment
that continuously contribute to family violence, alcohol and
substance abuse and youth despondency.
As we are convinced that families are the core nucleus of
society, this prompted the office of the mayor as the political
head of the Emfuleni Local Municipality, together with her
leadership at council level, to declare all these priority
projects of the municipality.
For execution purposes, co-coordinators were employed and
tasked with the gargantuan responsibility of addressing these
issues by developing implementable programmes and deliverables
with clear time-frames.
Community participation, in realizing these goals, becomes
central and critical. A coordinated and managed approach is
necessary to deliver on these issues. It therefore becomes
incumbent for society to assume centrality and ownership of
these programmes as they affect our daily lives and it is
us and only us alone as a community united in purposes and
action who can overcome this burden in congruence with our
vision and mission to create a better society devoid of unemployment,
gender discrimination and exploitation, sexual and domestic
abuse and violence, a society free from drugs, substance and
alcohol abuse, a society that cares about the elderly, the
sick and the frail. “Together we can build a caring
society”.
Operation Restore Dignity
Its principal objective being to create a user friendly and
a hazard free and healthy environment, we need to beyond the
operation itself. Creative an innovative means optimize the
goals of the operation need to be explored. Of these, amongst
others is to create a green environment by way of planting
trees and to clean our public parks and make them a safer
place for our children and generations to come.
In this instance, job creation opportunities become abundant.
The office of the Executive Mayor and the MMC for Waste are
in the process of establishing a twinning programme with a
municipality based in the Netherlands. This process is at
an advanced staged. It will entail training our people in
waste management. Already a site has been identified to kick
start the project which will create employment for our people.
It will deal with sorting of waste and recycling in a safer
and professionally technological methodology. Funds have already
been set aside. Our people will be informed of developments
on this project. We further need to use the National Arbor
Day as an opportunity to deepen the operation and give it
more publicity and conscientise our people on the importance
of nature. Our environment should remain a heritage which
needs to be treasured.
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