The Musina Local Municipality has put aside an amount of R8,7million to upgrade the Lesley Manyathela Stadium. A further R300 000 has been allocated for the renovation of the tennis courts in Musina Nancefield Extension 7.

This was revealed by Mayor Caroline Mahasela when she delivered the 2009/2010 budget speech at the Musina Show Grounds on Tuesday night. The mayor announced a total budget of R132 777 342.00.

She said the budget estimates were done in line with the municipality’s integrated development plan (IDP). “The IDP remains a cornerstone of every developmental and people-friendly budget, a critical tool for effective governance and proper planning. This is a culmination of almost 10 months of rigorous consultative processes that ensured that we got the views of every community member represented in this budget. We con-tinue to set trends in ensuring meaningful participation of our communities and stakeholders in the planning and implementation of our developmental programmes as mandated by the Local Government Municipal Systems Act of 2000”.

Mahasela said the government had identified five priority areas for the next five years. “These areas include the creation of decent work and sus-tainable livelihood, education, health, rural development, food security and land reform and the fight against crime and corruption. Musina Municipality will tackle all these priorities with all the means at our disposal. Given the support that we have from our different stakeholders, we have no doubt that we will be able to bring a better life to our people because we are encouraged by the vision of an inclusive society and a nation united in its diversity.”

She said countless political activities had taken place in our country in the past few months – the most important being the recent general elections. “South Africans went out in large numbers to elect a new national assembly, as well as the provincial legislatures on 22 April. This shows that South Africa is a democratic country where we can elect our own leaders through the ballot - revitalising and giving new energy to our leaders. Now that the elections are over, we are now getting down to work because this is the continuation of our mandate to intensify service delivery and build sustainable livelihoods and communities. The upcoming five years will be years of action, which should qualitatively and quantitatively improve the living conditions of our people.”

The mayor said the Musina Municipality had some challenges during the 2008/2009 financial year, but that did not deter the efforts to render efficient services. “The challenges we had included limited resources, the cholera outbreak, the influx of Zimbabwean nationals into the country, the influence of pressure groups, especially on issues pertaining to housing, to name but a few. We managed to overcome all these through the support from all our partners, including government structures”.

She said the municipality had recorded progress in the previous financial year: “We can pride ourselves on completed and existing projects which include the construction of the new community hall, extension of the civic centre, erection of a new workshop, high-mast community light-ing, solid waste upgrade, upgrade of the cemetery at ward 6, road construction and maintenance, internal sewer at ward 6 and upgrading water supply in rural villages, to name but a few.”

Some of the capital projects for the 2009/2010 financial year include: Electrical infrastructure upgrade at Musina extension 14 (R5,4m), Construction of Concrete Roads (R5m), Public toilets in CBD (R800 000), Provision of Storm Water Channels in Nancefield extension 8 (R1,2m), Renovation of Community Hall in Nancefield extension 6 & 7 (R1,6m), Palisade fence at the cemetery (R2,5m), parks in extension 8 & Nance-field (R1m), Market centre in extension 8 (R800 000.00), renovation of MTD stadium (R2m) and electrical infrastructure upgrade (reticulation ex-tention 14 Musina) (R5,2m).

* The Capital estimates of the budget is R32 165 000, of which R20m is from the municipality’s own revenue. The total operational budget is R100 612 342.