Ahead of the 2016 Municipal Elections, this is the Democratic Alliance plan for Knysna.

Are the DA making new promises or are 2011’s promises being repeated?

What’s glaringly missing this time is the previous election mantra of “transparency and open doors”. It’s unfortunate that that proved to be a blatant 5-year lie… and that they are going to ignore it as a goal this time round.

What else do you find missing from this plan? What do you love about it?

Democratic Alliance Plan for Knysna

Our offer to the citizens of Knysna for the 2016 local government elections is simple: allow us to continue making progress by lending us your vote for the next five years.

Our pledge to you is to increase opportunity and create jobs by:

• Investing in infrastructure-led growth.
• Creating comprehensive expanded public works programmes (EPWP) that fairly benefit all recipients and give them work experience and skills. Beginning in working with local small and micro enterprises, business chambers and regional economic development agencies to promote Knysna businesses.
• Cutting red tape. To this end we have already changed our system of delegations so that decisions can be made more quickly and efficiently. We have also introduced electronic submission of planning and building control applications, resulting in shorter turnaround times. We have centralised our database to synchronise it with provincial and national databases, so that excellence can be rewarded and poor performance curtailed.
• Making Knysna a world-class tourist destination and centre of knowledge-based and IT excellence.

The above steps will provide an exciting environment that will be conducive to private sector investment and resultant job creation.

To stop corruption by:

• Increasing residents’ awareness of our anti-corruption hotline and our anti-fraud policy
• Excluding councillors and other public representatives from the EPWP recruitment process.
• Achieving greater transparency in the supply chain system.

To provide better services by:

• Establishing an effective system to process complaints.
• Fixing all potholes within determined timelines and maintaining municipal roads.
• Upgrading informal settlements, with regular area cleaning (including cutting down of dangerous and alien trees) and weekly refuse removal.
• Constructing the planned multipurpose centres in Rheenendal and White Location.

To provide better governance by:

• Re-arranging mayoral committee portfolios.
• Streamlining the municipal organogram.
• Restructuring and empowering ward committees.
• Better focus on youth.
• Providing more resources to municipal public accounts committee.
• Reviewing our public participation procedures and policies and our communications.

Show your support or criticism for the DA’s 2016 Municipal Election plan by commenting on the Love Knysna Facebook page.

View Your Guide to Knysna 2016 Municipal Elections.