PORT ELIZABETH, April 15 (ANA) – Nelson Mandela Bay Executive Mayor Danny Jordaan on Friday conceded that it was not an easy task to turn around Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality.
Jordaan was speaking at a media briefing ahead of the ANC election manifesto launch set to take place at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium at the weekend.
In his address to the media, Jordaan was confident around the city’s growth and highlighted that the metro was on its way in becoming a “smart city” which could see the development of a newly established waterfront.
Responding to a question around the Integrated Public Transport System (IPTS), Jordaan said that the buses would likely run towards the end of the year.
The R2 billion IPTS project was meant to be functional in 2010. This was one of the issues that were being dealt with by Jordaan’s team with regards to cleaning up maladministration.
“That was one of the issues we had to clean out the IPTS system, we are now going to council to approve the final plan, it’s going to be rolled out in three phases with three routes and it will run towards the end of this year,” he said.
Turning to politics, Jordaan said that the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay was strong.
“Make no mistake, the ANC here is very, very strong… all ANC members must focus on winning this election,” he said.
When asked how the ANC planned to win over youthful voters – considering the high unemployment rate was at 36 percent in Nelson Mandela Bay – Jordaan responded that a plan was already in place.
“We actually have a plan, in the oceans economy this is how we are going to create jobs, in the creative economy this is how we are going to create jobs. You can’t just get on a stage and say there are going to be jobs, there has to be a plan of which we have already started to implement,” said Jordaan.
The Nelson Mandela Municipality has been plagued by service delivery protests in recent months, but despite this Jordaan said that generally people in the metro were happy with progress being made.
“The majority of the people will tell you that we have done more in 10 months, than what has been done in many years, people know and the question of the people is, can he deliver this? Yes, I delivered an event which was voted through out the world as the best in the world, and they don’t doubt that I have the capability, determination and understanding to deliver,” said Jordaan.
Senior ANC officials have been in full force scattered around the province canvassing for support in the build up to election day on Aug 3.
The manifesto launch is set to take place from 10am with interfaith prayers, followed by messages of support from the SA Communist Party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco). President Jacob Zuma, who is also the president of the ANC, is expected to speak at 11am.
-African News Agency (ANA)
