Pretoria - Hammanskraal people expressed mixed feelings when the MEC for Human Settlements, Urban Planning and Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Lebogang Maile postponed a report back meeting due to low turn-out.
Maile and his team arrived early at the Suurman Community Hall to engage local business people about the newly passed Township Economic Development Bill that awaits the signature of Premier David Makhura to become an act that will stimulate economic activity and growth in the townships.
However, due to a low turn-out of fewer than 20 business people and the presence of ordinary community members who are not in business, Maile and his team opted to postpone the meeting to accommodate the larger Hammanskraal business community after reaching out to them.
Makhura and his members of the executive council embarked on a journey to engage all 105 Gauteng townships communities about the bill that will be law and address the township economic value chain and ensure that the R100 billion is circulated in the townships to improve the lives of the people.
However, the postponement did not sit well with some business people who argued that Maile and his team should have accommodated those who were able to attend the meeting. They said there was no database of all the local business people meaning that postponing the meeting would be done for the benefit of people who could not be guaranteed.
Maile was able to reach an understanding with the people, convincing them to raise questions and concerns and then allow for the postponement because he did not prefer to see the hall being filled mostly with people who were not in business as they were not the targeted people to exhaust the opportunities of the bills and create employment for others.
He said he was seeing that workers from the Expanded Public Works Programme were being ushered in, but although he did not mind the presence of people, the aim was not to give the impression that they filled the seats, but to actually reach the most relevant people.
Tirelo Selala and Emanuel Mpofu said that although they arrived late because they only found out about the meeting in the morning, they would have preferred that the meeting continued and the second meeting be used as a follow-up meeting.
"I transport goods for people in Hammanskraal when they relocate or need to make deliveries of large items like furniture. This for me was an opportunity to hear how I could benefit and grow my business so that one day I could have enough money to increase my fleet and hire assistance. But I do understand that the MEC does not want to just do something for the sake of doing it," said Mpofu.
Speaking to Pretoria News, Maile said Makhura and his executive agreed that they needed to go out and engage the small to medium enterprises about the bill passed by the legislature after advocating for township economic revitalisation in the last couple of years.
"We even adopted a strategy to ensure that we work in a systematic and co-ordinated way as the Gauteng government to boost township economy because township economies are estimated to be worth about R100 billion according to a study by the World Bank.
"The problem is that the money does not circulate in the township economy because township based businesses are largely consuming and not producing. One of the things we want to accomplish is to have more township based businesses producing for the township market."
He said the bill would aid local businesses to find space in busy areas to operate businesses as that used to be challenging. It would also ensure that South Africans in townships would also be reserved some of the business opportunities that are mainly dominated by foreign nationals - something that is actually done in other parts of the world.
He said the government has always been investing and would continue to make monetary investments, but they would need real entrepreneurs to come and benefit and create jobs instead of the wrong people who used government funding to buy luxury cars and then failed to create work opportunities for other people.
Pretoria News