KOUGA Mayor Horatio Hendricks marked his first 100 days in office on 29 July 2018.
As is customary, he presented an overview of his first 100 days to the Kouga Council.
Some of the highlights were:
- The Mayoral Committee was cut from six to five members so as to make more money available for service delivery.
- Two new PR councillors, Robin Jantjies and Timothy Jantjes, were sworn in to replace the late Mayor Elza van Lingen and Clr Atri Carstens, who resigned due to personal reasons.
- The Ward Development Fund was rolled out, with community groups across the region benefiting.
- The electricity was switched on to 116 households at Donkerhoek and 154 households at the Kruisfontein 391 housing development.
- Spray lights were installed and 15 chemical toilets put in place at the informal settlement Stofwolk as part of efforts to eradicate the bucket system.
- Ongoing drought mitigation efforts included the purchase and installation of 80 rainwater tanks at Hankey and Patensie.
- The title deed programme was taken to Humansdorp where more than 600 title deeds were delivered to Kruisfontein on Nelson Mandela Day.
- Jeffreys Bay was crowned the Kwêla Town of the Year. The prize included free marketing to the value of R1-million and a sponsorship from KIA, also valued at R1-million, for the hosting of a festival in September. The three-day KIA Makietie Jeffreysbaai was a massive success and attracted more than 10 000 visitors.
- The Jeffreys Bay Winterfest was one of the most successful to date, with more than 290 temporary jobs created. It also saw the return of the World Championship Tour for women to J’Bay for the first time since 2 000.
- Critical staff vacancies were filled while keeping staff expenditure in check. The wage bill for the last three months of 2017/2018 was consistently lower than it had been for the first three months of the financial year despite the staff complement increasing from 811 permanent employees to 873.
- The municipality’s first Financial Misconduct Disciplinary Board was established to help fight fraud and corruption.
- Irregular expenditure of R2,5-million, dating back to 2013/2014, was investigated by the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) and written off in line with legal prescripts.
- In order to help combat crime the municipality entered into an agreement with a security company for the entrances of towns to be monitored by CCTV cameras.
