The Nelson Mandela Bay Executive, Danny Jordaan touched on a number of issues while addressing a Special Council Meeting on Wednesday morning.
Jordaan focused on the Metro's economy, law enforcement and education among other things.
He said a Metropolitan Police Force would be appointed from April to alleviate the burning issues of crime
Jordaan told the Special Council meeting that the delay in establishing the Metro Police Force related to the appointment of an Executive Director.
The Municipality had appointed an Executive Director for Safety and Security, but earlier this year Pinkie Mathabathe had asked to be relieved of her duties.
He told the meeting that the name of a suitable candidate was tabled on Wednesday for consideration.
"The problem has been the executive director and you cannot fly a plan if you do not have pilot. We have the money, we have the plans we must just get the pilot and today we are putting in the executive director, we are refocusing on the metro police and we launching it in April. This is our commitment" he said
Meanwhile, Jordaan also told the Council that central to the Municipality's service delivery mandate is to put the people first.
Jordaan said the metro had R1.7 billion to help speed up areas of service delivery.
He said this required the Municipality to investigate customer expectations and perceptions of the quality of services delivered by the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality.
Jordaan said that the Municipality's already embarked on an audit of service delivery in all Departments.
He said it's therefore crucial to gauge the communities perception of service delivery against actual service delivery outputs.
" We need to continuously measure the satisfaction of residents,the unhappiness or dissatisfaction of residents, in terms of legislation in the constitution we are obliged to hold customer satisfaction surveys and we can test then the wheels of our citizens on the services that we render" he said
He also highlighted that councillors should be preoccupied in making the city a compelling place to live, invest and bring about opportunities to spur economic growth and job creation.
Jordaan said a working team was hard at work to deal with various projects that stand to benefit the economy
"As we are seated here this morning there is a meeting of the working group we started at 8:30 this morning to deal with various matters like the manganese terminal, fish farms, the waterfront development, tourism and the re-development of Bay World and many other projects. That meeting is continuing as we speak. As well as the township of the transitioning econcomy with us, the university has already submitted a report on the research findings as to how we are going to build and strengthen a township or a transitioning economy in this metro" he said.
He added that the Minister of Small Businesses is expected visit the metro in April to help SMME's fit into the economy.
Addressing a group of young people from Helenvale, who attended the meeting, Jordaan said he has been engaging directly with tertiary students on education related challenges.
"One of the issues is to ensure that students who recieve quality education in this metro remain in the city to invest the much needed knowledge and foster efficiency, both in local government and business in this metro. We need to ensure that they are safe and offer possible learnerships for them and create conducive environments for them to learn and grow in our metro. I have commited to them to have a more structured engagement over the period of time" he said.
Jordaan also encouraged the public who missed the first weekend of registration to either visit local IEC offices during weekdays or visit registration stations on the 9th and 10th of April when the second weekend of registration commences.
