Durban - President Cyril Ramaphosa listened to the concerns of businesses in Durban that were affected by April’s floods when he met members of the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Sunday.
KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala said the meeting helped in providing a platform for collaboration with national, provincial, and local governments with the private sector to map out a strategic plan of action that would enable the KZN business sector to restore its businesses that have been negatively affected mainly in the course of the past two years.
Co-chairperson of the KZN Growth Coalition Moses Tembe said they were committed to working with the government and other social partners in rebuilding the country. “If you look at the opportunities and challenges, the opportunities far outweigh the challenges and we have to keep the hope burning in all South Africans to hope for a better tomorrow.”
Issues impacting business were safety and security with rampant criminality being a huge issue for businesses.
“The issue of forces of extraction; we believe that defeating extraction as the central organising model of current economic behaviour is central to our political and economic future,” Tembe said.
On Treasury regulations, Tembe said, “Huge investment will be unlocked in the private sector if we begin to look at some of the regulations raised especially around the funding of infrastructure in the municipal area. The public-private partnership model has got to be pursued more actively.”
Tembe said the burning issue for business was the professionalisation of the public sector.
“It is paramount for us to begin to ensure that we create a very capable state and capacity development and transparency. Also, pay more attention to human resources development and alignment to skills at the municipality leadership level in particular. That issue is exacerbated by the challenges raised by factional politics which is a matter that must be addressed decisively. We need to ensure we create a culture of compliance and consequent management and re-auditing is quite critical.”
Tembe told Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula that his department could play a critical role in positioning KZN as a gateway to sub-Saharan Africa and provide impetus in the integration of the economy of Africa and intra trade.
The South African Pulp and Paper Industries Limited (Sappi), pointed out that they contributed R1 billion to the KZN economy. Sappi said the key was to get the South Coast rail line up and running as soon as possible. This was costing the company an additional R10 million per month to move key raw materials by road.
Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said: “As we re-build, it must be done better taking into account the lessons we would have learned from the floods.”
She said scientists had warned that KZN was going to experience frequent floods.
Daily News