Cape News

Some more of the DA's anti-poor policies...

City increases benefits for the poor and needy and calls on them to register
MEDIA RELEASE
NO. 468/ 2009
30 JULY 2009

At a time when the rapidly increasing cost of food, electricity and other living costs are driving the most vulnerable sectors of our society deeper into debt, the City of Cape Town is increasing the benefits which are part of its compassionate policy to bring them financial relief.

Thousands of people who earn little or nothing, who are precluded from gainful employment by age or disability, or who are minors compelled to manage their households because they have lost their parents to illness or crime, can and will benefit from the City’s indigent policy - provided they meet the criteria for this policy and take the trouble to register.

“The City wants to make municipal services accessible and affordable to residents who are battling to make ends meet,” says Executive Mayor, Dan Plato. “We also want to assist people threatened with the loss of their homes because they are struggling to maintain their bond repayments.”

Ratepayers who own a single home in which they live and whose total household income is R3000.00 a month or less will qualify for a 100% rates rebate when they register themselves as indigent. The same benefit is available to a minor managing a household registered in the name of his/her deceased parent/s.

Residents, who register as indigent can, on a once-off basis, also have their municipal arrears written off provided they allow the City to install a water management device and a pre-paid electricity meter in their homes.

However, if you don't meet the criteria to register as indigent, you could still qualify for a rates rebate. This is available, on a sliding scale of 10% - 90%, to registered homeowners where the total household income ranges from R3000,01 to R8000 a month, where the occupants are aged 60 years or more or who are the recipients of a disability pension/grant. The previous limits for these grants were R2880 and R7000.

Everyone who qualifies for indigent benefits and rates rebates will have to re-register annually and prove that the circumstances which enabled them to benefit from the policy, still apply.

“Another deserving sector of society that is being increasingly disadvantaged by the current economic downturn are non-profit and public benefit organisations,” says Alderman Ian Neilson, Executive Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Finance. “Charitable donations are usually among the first budget cuts that are implemented by big business in times of austerity and this at a time when the poor and needy are most dependent on NGOs for help. The City is aware that these charitable organisations have incurred increased costs and that some have gone into arrears with their municipal services. To assist these charitable organisations, who meet the criteria, the City will, as a once off, write off these arrears.

“The City wants everyone who qualifies for indigent assistance and the rates rebate to register so that the relief measures we have put in place can restore their dignity and take away the depressive fear of impending poverty. We call on community organisations to encourage potential candidates to register with the City,” Alderman Neilson he said.

For more information, please call the City’s Contact Centre on 0860 103 089 or visit your nearest municipal office.
 
Construction of Mitchells Plain Hospital to Start in January 2010


22 September 2009
SOURCE: Ministry of Health (Provincial Government of the Western Cape)
At a press conference at Lentegeur Psychiatric Hospital today, Western Cape Minister of Health, Theuns Botha, announced that this Western Cape Provincial Government has taken a decision to expedite the construction of Mitchell's Plain District Hospital, and that construction will start as soon as January 2010.

Botha said that the Western Cape Provincial Government's determination to address the capacity problems in Mitchell's Plain and Khayelitsha, led to a speedy resolution. "It is a demonstration that this Cabinet recognises the community's dire need for a hospital in Mitchell's Plain, and the need to lighten the load on GF Jooste Hospital.


"We inherited a legacy which I refer to as an apartheids vacuum, a space that left the whole of the Cape Flats without infrastructure. Now it's our opportunity, and our responsibility, to fill that vacuum," says Botha.
The Western Cape Department of Health analyzed the Burden of Disease, as well as the distribution of hospital beds according to the population count. GF Jooste Hospital currently services a population of 1.3 million people. Relative to other acute hospitals, it carries a disproportionately large burden of HIV, TB and trauma cases. The monthly attendance at the Emergency Centre ranges from 3000 people in summer to around 4500 people in winter. Approximately 1200 of these patients are admitted on a monthly basis.


The Mitchell's Plain Community Health Centre sees only walk-in cases, around 4000 per day, and not in-patients. Emergency patients are stabilised and sent to hospitals like GF Jooste and Groote Schuur. It follows that there is a very urgent need for a hospital in the Mitchell's Plain area.
With this decision Provincial Government intends to speed up the construction of the hospital and completion is planned for December 2012 (37 month contract). This will have the added benefits that bid prices will not increase, and reduce inflation costs. The tender will be awarded within the next month, and full-scale construction will start in January 2010.
The construction cost for the complex is estimated at R540 million.
The new hospital will form an important link in the reshaping of healthcare services by providing district healthcare to the communities of Mitchell's Plain, Phumlani, Mandalay, Browns Farm and Cross Roads. The estimated population of 432,462 people that will be served by this hospital is a mix from different communities and of different socio economic status.
The hospital will have a total of 230 beds, and the design will allow for future expansion to 300 beds.
Inpatient services will cover:

  • 60 Medical Adult beds
  • 60 Surgical Adult beds
  • 60 Obstetrics beds, including Kangaroo mother care
  • 30 Pediatrics beds
  • 20 Overnight beds
  • Accident and Emergency Unit
  • General Outpatients
The new hospital will provide district level support to the Community Health Care Centres of Cross Roads, Lentegeur, and Mitchell's Plain and Rocklands as well as the primary health care facilities in the sub district to ensure that patients receive care at the lowest level of entry into the healthcare system.
The referral regional and tertiary hospital for the hospital will be G F Jooste, Karl Bremer and Tygerberg Hospital respectively.
The site will be protected by an electrical fence, security booms and surveillance cameras.
Mitchell's Plain Hospital: View Model
 
Cape Town tops in service delivery

By Anel Lewis
Metro Writer

Cape Town is the best municipality in South Africa.

According to the report by the economic empowerment rating agency Empowerdex the City of Cape Town ranks top in the country for service delivery compared with metropolitan municipalities, followed closely by the City of Johannesburg.

The Western Cape offers one of the best levels of service delivery in the country, while Limpopo has the worse service delivery track record of the nine provinces scoring just 46 percent.

The Eastern Cape fell below the national average of 50 percent on all aspects of service delivery.
Head of research at Empowerdex Steven Hawes said the report provided a critical assessment of actual levels of service delivery.

"An understanding of the weaknesses in local government comes with many benefits. It provides insight into whether recent protests reflect genuine community concerns or manipulation of information by community and political leaders."

The service delivery index rated the delivery of housing, water, electricity, waste removal and sanitation in all 231 local municipalities, 46 district municipalities and six metropolitan municipalities.

Service delivery improvements were measured by comparing the results of the Community Survey 2007 with Census 2001.

[email protected]
 
I laughed so hard, reading dackboys ANC rhetoric! Boet come on pull the race card, it's the only thing you have left. Zille is doing an awesome job!
 
Cape Town a racist city - study
By Craig McKune

Cape Town is seen to be hostile to black people, while white people are still being appointed and promoted at rates suggesting "positive discrimination" in their favour, a damning new study has found.
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http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20091022043211281C843507

In a survey of employment equity in the Western Cape commissioned by the Employment Promotion Programme, researchers Dr Sabie Surtee and Professor Martin Hall found that contrary to claims that whites are the losers in post-apartheid South Africa, white people are still being appointed and promoted at rates which suggest "positive discrimination" in their favour.
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same old same old.

not african enough, not dirty enough....

cape town has all sorts of cultures and its heritage is not limited to one group/race

dutch, malay, indian, Portuguese...etc etc

I assume by racist they are suggesting that all whites hate non-whites but do not consider that perhaps racism can be the reverse too.
 
its so racist that thousands upon thousands of people from the Eastern Cape flock to Cape Town each month and set up camp....sometimes anywhere.
 
capetownguy said:
its so racist that thousands upon thousands of people from the Eastern Cape flock to Cape Town each month and set up camp....sometimes anywhere.
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Those are driven by desperation...however I'm sure this survey was focused on proffessionals.
 
capetownguy said:
same old same old.

not african enough, not dirty enough....

cape town has all sorts of cultures and its heritage is not limited to one group/race

dutch, malay, indian, Portuguese...etc etc

I assume by racist they are suggesting that all whites hate non-whites but do not consider that perhaps racism can be the reverse too.
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No CTG, read the article, nothing to do with hatred.

It's very specifically referring to research conducted by Sabie Surtee and Martin Hall, which examined Western Cape businesses that together employed about 60 000 people in management positions. It suggested transformation in the Cape was "at best stalled, and perhaps in reverse".

"In all companies participating in this study, African people are under-represented (in management positions) in comparison to their overall contribution to the South African workforce," the researchers wrote. They found black people to almost always be less successful than white people in moving up their career paths, creating what they called an "ebony ceiling".

"Bluntly put, it is difficult to see how the participating companies from sectors such as the retail and financial services sectors, who employ large numbers of skilled people, can survive as national businesses if they continue to increase their reliance on white people who themselves constitute less than 10 percent of the South African population," Surtee and Hall wrote.

The study was based on data from interviews with mainly black employees from companies in a variety of sectors including retail, financial services and petro-chemicals. The focus was on management.

In the five retail companies surveyed, 65 percent of top and senior management appointments or promotions went to whites in 2008, but only 10 percent went to black people. At junior management level, 27 percent of the opportunities went to white people and 36 percent to black. Similar patterns were found in the other sectors.

In employee interviews, the researchers found "a broad consensus that Cape Town is hostile to African people" particularly when compared to Johannesburg.

"It's like I have moved 10 or 20 years back," one of the employees said. "Joburg is like so far and Cape Town is so very backward. What I always ask myself, where do the black people work in the Western Cape? I don't see them. You walk in the malls, you walk in the store. It's either coloured or white people. Where are the black people? How do they pay their bills, what are they eating?".
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Well its far from the reality I've seen in the corporate world considering where we were 10 years ago. If you zoom in on the major insurance/life companies in Cape Town, your Liberties, OM, Metropolitan, Sanlam...you'll find a very different story...these are large large companies...

even when you move into the investment/accounting sector, there has been significant transformation..

suggesting that it is going backwards is far from the mark considering I have friends at these companies or I have dealt with them in the past. I'm not suggesting I have seen more than the study but from what I have seen there has never been a greater push to achieve transformation across various levels, including the need for females and disable individuals in top management positions.

Its a challenge yes, especially when skilled and experienced and qualified black individuals are tougher to find, but perhaps this "study" confuses Cape Town with other cities where perhaps a black individual simply walks into top positions without the necessary experience/qualifications/know-how.
 
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capetownguy said:
Well its far from the reality I've seen in the corporate world considering where we were 10 years ago. If you zoom in on the major insurance/life companies in Cape Town, your Liberties, OM, Metropolitan, Sanlam...you'll find a very different story...these are large large companies...

even when you move into the investment/accounting sector, there has been significant transformation..

suggesting that it is going backwards is far from the mark considering I have friends at these companies or I have dealt with them in the past. I'm not suggesting I have seen more than the study but from what I have seen there has never been a greater push to achieve transformation across various levels, including the need for females and disable individuals in top management positions.

Its a challenge yes, especially when skilled and experienced and qualified black individuals are tougher to find, but perhaps this "study" confuses Cape Town with other cities where perhaps a black individual simply walks into top positions without the necessary experience/qualifications/know-how.
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Yes I agree with this, I use to work in an insurance company head office and the "evil whitey" was a dying breed. They were way in the minority and that was about 8 years ago
 
capetownguy said:
Well its far from the reality I've seen in the corporate world considering where we were 10 years ago. If you zoom in on the major insurance/life companies in Cape Town, your Liberties, OM, Metropolitan, Sanlam...you'll find a very different story...these are large large companies...
Click to expand...

So what you are saying is that Dr Sabie Surtee and Professor Martin Hall made up their results?
 
I think people enjoy talking about the extremes but never mention the balance.

The "dying breed" view may be a policy of a particular company but even in these extremes, a skilled white male should find employment in their field in Cape Town, without too much waiting time. And yes, there are cases where some people are just not skilled enough or too stoopid regardless of their race.

The other extreme would be what this article tries to sensationalize ...i.e. racism...Is it because of a smaller black population in Cape Town, that the make-up of certain companies are anti-transformation.

In Cape Town, if you are going to go for a "racial mix" of people(something I do not believe in) that "reflects" the population, that would be, for every 10 people, 5 coloureds, 2/3 white individuals, 2/3 black individuals and perhaps somebody from another racial background.

To declare Capetonians racist or Cape Town a "racist" city is extreme. Furthermore, describing the attitude between races as "hostile" is honestly over-dramatic and sensationalist.

Companies have entire departments dedicated to employment equity, with their "numbers" reviewed by various bodies.

In fact many, if not most companies are desperately searching for these skilled/qualified/potential upper management individuals and will pay to get them. If you also look at the graduate programmes for many companies for students fresh out of uni, these are overwhelmingly in search of a wide variety of students from all sorts of backgrounds.
 
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The DA are acting like absolute retards.Government is not helping either.

City to put brakes on rapid transit programme

October 26, 2009 Edition 2

ANEL LEWIS Metro Writer

FACED with a budget that has ballooned from R1.3bn to R4.16bn and uncertainty about guaranteed funding from the national government, the City of Cape Town has drastically cut back on its Integrated Rapid Transit (IRT) plan.

Not only has the budget almost quadrupled, but the city faces an annual operating deficit of R99 million.

Phase 1A was modified two months ago when it became clear costs had risen to R3.5bn. The city said then it would downscale the project. This cost escalation is under forensic review and the findings are expected this week.

The estimated cost of the amended Phase1A is now R4.5bn, including a R300m allowance for project delays, cost rises and foreign exchange.

Head of IRT Mike Marsden said IRT infrastructure already being constructed would have to lie dormant for 14 months after the World Cup until the city could get more funding.

The number of buses being bought for the basic routes that will be running for the World Cup has been cut to save money, and the city has put plans for a reserve fleet on ice.

If further funding is not secured, the city may have to reassess the viability of rolling out the IRT to the rest of the city after 2010.

Marsden told a special mayoral committee meeting the city had R2.35bn dedicated funding from national government. But if the indicative funding of R647m and R800m for the next two financial years was cut, the city "would be in a predicament".

There is no guarantee that national government will not reduce this allocation.

The city has already spent about R413 million on IRT projects and was committed contractually to work amounting to about R1 125m. "We are in a difficult situation," he said.

Marsden said the city had adopted a prudent financial plan for the IRT, and would only do work if funding was guaranteed.

Mayor Dan Plato said municipalities were required "to tighten belts and reprioritise their finances". "We need to act responsibly and look at the city's financial situation. We can't allow ourselves to be caught with our pants down further down the line."

He said a responsible government would not allow tenders to be advertised if there was no money in the bank.

"It would mean drawing capital from other budgets, and we can't do that."

Of the downscaled IRT, Plato said: "It's a business decision, nothing else."

But some councillors were concerned about the costs and project's future. Mayoral committee member for community services Gerard Ras said it seemed there could be further cost rises and that the budget might have to be readjusted again in January next year.

Ras said his party, the Independent Democrats, would oppose the recommendation to authorise the financial costs of the amended IRT at this week's council meeting.

Work on the IRT will be capped at R2.25bn pending extra funding. Construction will stop at the R27 intersection with Blaauwberg Road with a bus-way turnaround loop and the Bayside Station. The city will extend its existing contract to allow for the R14-million construction of this bus station. A contract to extend this service to Dunoon and Atlantis will be considered only when there is more funding.

[email protected]
 
Not sure how you get that they are acting like retards - if there is no money, there is no money. The other day it was shock, horror that the Airbus deal had risen dramatically and I suppose most sane people would agree to pull out.

What's so different here? Yes, we need the stuff. But how do prices increase? The only reason is due to poor contract management. You want to run something properly you adopt the Disney approach. You say what you want done and accept no variation orders - and there are plenty of people that will accept those terms.

Methinks there are too many fingers in the pie.
 
I've been following this project very closely, they ARE acting like retards. This coming from a pro DA individual.

Nobody is willing to make the tough decision to see transport as an investment not simply a cost.

I understand a cautious/prudent approach but then why not apply this to the stadium to which they've added R600 million extra with the hopes of getting this back through ticket income sales etc. which are not guaranteed.

With R600 million planned to be received for the IRT in 2011 and R800 million in 2012, some other sources of funding should be considered which would then be offset when the government funds are received.

Rather than focussing on service levels they've decided to focus on reducing the fleet as a way of "cutting costs". This fleet actually only accounts for R100 million of the cost and will barely be sufficient for the match day shuttle to the stadium.

There are NO feeder buses being bought so any hopes of the inner city bus system planned for more than a decade are scrapped too.

How much longer must we wait for a decent system? Who will take the tough and bold decisions ?

This is one big mess up by the DA.

And as for "drawing capital from other budgets", this was certainly not a problem before.

We have under invested in transport for decades and it seems we have another incomplete fly-over on our hands...again.
 
There is a huge increase in the budget. We aren't talking about a 10% variance.

I agree that you can't always see things as a cost - but it has to be sustainable.
 
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