Apart from the much-anticipated construction of a small fishing harbour, Port St Johns municipal bosses are mulling building a huge golf course that would turn the “crown jewel of the Wild Coast” into an attractive prospect for hosting huge tournaments.
This was one in a long list of developmental plans revealed by PSJ mayor Nomvuzo Mlombile-Cingo during a media and stakeholder engagement session on Wednesday.
She said although the town already had a golf course, it was too small to host major events.
And in any case, the land on which the facility stood was earmarked for a housing development.
“It’s one of the things that will lift the economy and the standard of the town,” she said.
“Obviously you would then need to build hotels to accommodate people [who come to play in those major tournaments].”
She said the municipality had already spent around R27m building access roads to connect rural areas to urban centres in the 2017-18 financial year.
In 2019, another R31m had been allocated to build more access roads.
“Sanral constructed around 21.2km of access roads in our municipality during the 2017-18 financial year.”
In addition, about 80% of the households in all the municipal wards had been connected to the national grid with 3,396 households waiting to be connected in 2019.
With regards to the much- talked about harbour, the mayor said they hoped it would become a reality soon as it would assist in generating revenue, one of the municipality’s biggest challenges.
“We need to create jobs,” she said, adding: “At the moment, our revenue is too small.”
She said while the PSJ terrain was able to attract thousands of tourists every year, it was also proving to be a hindrance to service delivery sometimes as it was too mountainous.
She told residents premier Phumulo Masualle had identified PSJ as a potential city.
But, she added, to fulfil their plans, the municipality needed to generate enough revenue.
As such, council had taken a decision to implement a revenue enhancement strategy to help counter the culture of non-payment of municipal rates.
This included hiring a private company to do debt collection and offering discounts to people who come forward to settle their debts.
But the mayor also revealed that the municipality was facing a major challenge due to the Caguba land claim.
The Daily Dispatch previously reported on the community of Caguba, which has launched one of the biggest land claims in the Eastern Cape, claiming most of the land in and around PSJ including its urban centre.
Mlombile-Cingo said engagements with the Caguba community had reached a stalemate but the department of land affairs would be visiting soon to try resolve the impasse.
On the Hawks investigation into tender fraud, which was initiated by the council late in 2018, the mayor said it was still incomplete but the municipality was co-operating with the elite unit.
She admitted that an eight-month strike by municipal workers in 2018 had crippled service delivery.
PSJ chamber of business chair Ndzamela Ncoyini attributed the length of the protest to “lack of political management”...