Minister for Public Works and Infrastructure Dean McPherson; (Photo: X)
South Africa is facing an “infrastructure crisis” and the department is working to fast-track projects to address urban decline and hundreds of abandoned and hijacked buildings across the country, says Dean McPherson The Minister of Public Works said this week.
In a media briefing, he spoke about a new partnership between his department, the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Public Works, the Federal Hospitality Association of South Africa (Fedasa) and the eThekwini Metro to boost tourism in the city.
Mr McPherson said there was a general acceptance that the subway was “not where it should be”, so local businesses and businesses were required to work together to address issues ranging from urban decay and crime to inadequate water and sanitation. He said he has established a presidential working group with city officials. and road infrastructure.
“Infrastructure is not just a city problem, it’s a national problem. We have an infrastructure crisis in this country. We’re catching up,” he said.
He said the department last week launched a Project Preparation Fund tender to provide support for projects worth more than R1 billion to local authorities, government departments and other entities to increase infrastructure investment and accelerate economic growth and job creation. He said he had set up a counter.
“Tourism contributes significantly to job creation in our country and it is vital that we get it right because it can bring people into the formal economy…We are seeing a decline in tourist numbers. [in eThekwini] And reservations are decreasing year by year. There are several factors to that, one of which obviously has to do with the condition of the beach. ”
Mr McPherson said 95 per cent of beaches were open in Isakwini. “We want to make the message very clear that eThekini is open. The beaches and the water are safe.”
Following a meeting with tourism officials, Mr McPherson said the department was considering making the technical expertise of Infrastructure South Africa, the Built Environment Agency, available to assist local authorities.
“We also looked at Blue Flag status. Between national, state and local governments, we looked at how to get that program off the ground and help solve problems further up the waterway. We need to think about what we can do as a sector to bring back an internationally recognized system that tourists can trust.”
He said it was important to raise awareness among people living upstream about how their actions affect the quality of the state's rivers and coasts.
hijacked building
Turning to problem buildings, the government said it had 388 buildings across the country that were hijacked or illegally occupied, and the ministry would work with local governments to “rectify” this.
“[W]”Whether it's in the city center or on the outskirts, we have buildings here that people live in, and that contributes to urban decay and crime,” he said.
The department recently secured the “repossession” of the dilapidated Excelsior Court in Berea, Durban, after it had been illegally occupied for more than a decade, stripped of even its lift. Similarly, his department recently won a court order to evict homeless people living outside Cape of Good Hope Castle, a major tourist attraction.
Mr McPherson said tourism operators in the city of Ley Nkonyeni on KwaZulu-Natal's south coast highlighted the difficulty in obtaining leases for government-owned properties.
“We have 47 properties on the Admiralty property.” [a strip of land inland of the high-water mark] The municipality owns the building, we own the land and we also have a lease agreement for renewal,” he said.
Mr McPherson said the tourism authority claimed the management had been instructed to transfer 30 per cent of its business to a third party to secure a lease renewal.
“That sounds like extortion, and that's what concerns me very much. We're not going to allow land that's owned by the state to be used to advance an evil agenda,” McPherson said. spoke.
“We want to make sure that businesses employing 300 people who have been trading there for a long time can have tenure, be able to build their businesses and invest, and that we will not allow this kind of behavior. It is used for political maneuvering.”
Rosemary Anderson, Fedasa national president, said the industry should join efforts to address the issue of derelict national buildings, “considering the reuse of buildings with our corporate members” and through corporate social responsibility programmes. He said that he would like to accept NGOs.
Although the state's foreign tourist arrivals have not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels, a Ministry of Home Affairs project and digital visa application process to expedite visa applications for Indian and Chinese tourists is underway. Introduction would help, she said. To increase arrivals.
Fedasa KwaZulu-Natal chairman Brett Tanguay said forward bookings for December were “looking pretty strong”.
He said he believed there would be “major changes” to the tourism landscape within the next 12 months as new state and central governments put pressure on local authorities to respond.
“We are now seeing slow recovery and progress in these municipalities,” he said.
