Krugersdorp has the potential to be a vibrant and opportunity-filled city, but due to the number of dilapidated buildings and drug-related activity, prostitution, illegal connections and high poverty rate in the inner city, job creation and community safety have taken a back seat under the previous administration.
However, I have been meeting with relevant stakeholders to investigate numerous solutions to the inner city decay and I am in the process of looking into establishing an inner city rejuvenation programme.
This is a tremendous undertaking, but we owe it to our youth, our many unemployed residents and the poor to tackle these issues head on.
Many of the inner city buildings are either hijacked, have been abandoned, their owners have absconded or moved overseas. Therefore many of these buildings pose a threat to the safety of our residents as they are used as drug houses or brothels.
We intend on serving several of these buildings with notices and take our proof of drug-dealing, prostitution or dilapidation to a court of law to enable us to receive a court order to have these buildings either demolished or cleared.
Lack of electricity and water in the inner city have also led to illegal connections, but because these connections are just reconnected when we disconnect them, we have now started the process of cutting the wires.
We are also aware that there could be corrupt police officers and if identified they will be reported to SAPS.
The municipality adopted an Inner City Regeneration Programme which has amongst other goals the development of a Municipal Precinct. In pursuance of that, we have been approached by a number of developers who are interested in the inner city development of Krugersdorp by way of renovation and rehabilitation of old buildings. We are therefore looking into declaring an urban development zone with the aim of allowing tax rebates on the expenditure of these companies in their effort to uplift the community.
By focussing our attentions on these forgotten inner city buildings, we will not only tackle the drugs and prostitution problem in Krugersdorp head on, but will open our inner city for development, create jobs, make our communities safe and restore Krugersdorp to the city of opportunities it can be.
Issued by Lynn Pannall, Executive Mayor of Mogale City Local Municipality.