Despite challenges faced over the past year the City of Johannesburg has carried out numerous advancements within the 12 municipal entities. The City through the Joburg Property Company has made over 150 properties available for investment to the private sector, turning the Inner City into an exciting development site, along with many other projects that the city is has completed.
The Executive Mayor, Councillor Herman Mashaba, is very facing the year ahead with high positivity, “I am excited because I think we are making progress, the team has been involved the last few months with extensive recruitment of the board, and I am really quite pleased about the report I received on the quality of the new appointments to the board”. The Executive Mayor continued to say that “the appointment of this board will really help us to move forward”, and that the message that the City wants to communicate is that there is a new culture of integrity and service, and service delivery with pride.
Executive Mashaba spoke of the future of the City: “Last year I spoke about turning the Inner City into a construction site, that project is no longer in the pipeline, it is a reality. Soon the 81 properties, and as you can imagine 81 properties all in one go – within the next 6-12 months, the city will soon be full of cranes building affordable accommodation for people, at the same time creating job opportunities”.
The City Manager, Dr Ndivhoniswani Lukhwareni says that plans are being put into place for the reduction of crime within the Inner City to assist with the ongoing rejuvenation and spoke of plans to pedestrianise and create a hub within Johannesburg. He commended the JPC on four successive clean audits and is looking forward to the fifth one.
City of Johannesburg, Chief Operations Officer, Mr Floyd Brink has been working very closely with the City’s Group Governance team to ensure a high level of compliance in the city. “I am very excited for moving forward from today, it’s almost like a new beginning – there is a lot that we can do in the city to enhance the manner in which we work, the manner in which we serve our people, it will always remain exciting for us.”
Mr Floyd Brink spoke of a focus on integrity and an ethical system, in order to drive the change that the citizens and the Executive Mayor want to see in the city.
“How do we grow the economy with what we have, all these advisory committees and the board, should all be aligned to one common goal, based on what the mayor has mentioned in our nine priorities, asked Mr Floyd Brink. “So we need a group of people within our entities: audit committees group, group advisory committees, to channel and align to one common goal.” Mr Brink’s closing remarks were that, “once we achieve that, I always believe the benefit will only be seen and felt by the citizens of the city. That is why we are here, for service delivery.”
Mr Raj Pillay, Group Head: Group Governance, said, “we will always have challenges to face, we have an increasing number of residents in the Inner City and we will always have limited resources, so that’s the challenge we are trying to address”, but that the City is ready for the year ahead, and is aligned to good governance structures and integrity.
The Joburg Property Company strategy is actively aligned to the mayoral priorities of providing economic development and attracting investment, ensuring that pro-development addresses inequality and poverty, creating a culture of enhanced service delivery with pride and enhancing financial sustainability.
Despite facing numerous challenges during 2017/2018, the Joburg Property Company has achieved a clean audit for the 4th consecutive year as well as a 93% annual KPI target and utilised 100% of its capex.
Looking forward the JPC will work closely with the City as it embarks on exciting new development projects such as student accommodation precincts comprising of student accommodation, libraries, tech hubs and shopping centre; as well as the commencement of the Inner City Properties that will be awarded within the coming weeks.
“We said that we were going to turn the inner city into a construction site, and we have already done that, if you look around you will see cranes and construction taking place throughout the Inner City”, Helen Botes, MD of Joburg Property Company said during her presentation at the AGM.
The Randburg Civic Precinct, Watt Street Interchange Precinct and Petrol Stations in Soweto are further exciting projects that the Joburg Property Company will be bringing to life together to the City.
The JPC is also working towards a transitional plan with regards to outdoor advertising as it believes that legalised and digitised outdoor advertising will generate revenue for the City of Joburg as well as allow SMME’s to participate in the economy.
Another exciting flagship project alongside the Inner City Properties, is the first ever Biodiversity Project, Southern Farm. This project plans to comprise of 50% housing and 50% commercial property and estimates to create 168 000 jobs during the development phase and a further 42 000 permanent jobs following completion. “That is what the JPC is about, and what we will be working on in the next financial year” – Helen Botes.