The newly elected mayor of the Makhado Municipality, Cllr Tsakani Glory Mashaba, committed herself to accelerating service delivery in the public interest when she was inaugurated as the new mayor of the municipality during a ceremony at the local show grounds last Friday evening. Since the Makhado council was limited mostly to men in the recent past, the new mayor expressed her appreciation to the ANC for appointing 50% women to serve in her municipal council. She said that elections gave councilors a fresh mandate to govern for a specific purpose. The mayor further claimed that the principles of service delivery should be improved and addressed through the alternative service delivery mechanisms such as accessibility, affordability, quality of products, accountability, integrated development services and value for money. Mashaba said that the new council will certainly discuss the adopted IDP and 2006/2007 budget estimates with a view to monitoring whether they are indeed addressing the needs of the people. She added that the council is going to reconstitute its committees in order to ensure that they become more accountable to the people who elected them. “I must also indicate that councilors will be going to for an induction workshop, starting early next month,” she said. Mashaba further claimed that, as from the forthcoming financial year, the municipality will strive to improve the lives of the people in practice through the budget. “The IDP requires us to bridge the gap between the first and second economy. Both councilors and officials will have to join hands to realise this dream. This is a mountain to climb if we mean business in terms of service delivery,” she said. She told the guests that Council cannot continue paying lip service to the voters. “The time has come for us to deliver on our mandate and I want to remind councilors that we are the servants of our people, while the officials are the foot soldiers who implement our service delivery plans. This time, service delivery must be visible to all,” she said. The mayor said that the HI virus has reached crisis proportions and is rife at the municipality and the municipality is facing challenges in the implementation of the HIV/Aids programmes, which include a shortage of medical and nursing personnel trained in HIV/Aids treatment, stigmatisation, tuberculosis, adverse reaction to anti-retroviral treatment, behavioral change and inadequate infrastructure. The Speaker of the provincial legislature, Dr Tshenuwani Farisani, said that the provincial government wants Cllr Glory Mashaba to improve the lives of the people. The director corporate services, Mr Vic Viljoen, told the guests that “irrespective of our colour at this municipality, we are Makhado.”