Solomon Philander, Sub-council 12 chairperson and Ward 116 councillor
On behalf of Sub-council 12, I would like to wish everyone a happy and prosperous new year, as we reflect on the achievement and growing areas of 2024.
Let the year 2025 bring new hope to take on challenges faced in our sub-council.
Although we achieved many successes (in 2024) we are mindful that there is so much more to do for our residents in the wards. We are looking at infrastructure development that create not only short-term jobs but will leave a legacy and [bring] economic spin-offs for the community of Mitchell’s Plain.
The capital projects under construction by the City and other spheres of government including parastatal entities are making progress.
We have the MyCiTi infrastructure project on AZ Berman to Stock roads, the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa capital project to get the rail services back on track, an economic development storage facility, a new police station under construction in Tafelsig, as well as rapid schools under construction (under way). We also have sport field management and development.
At the end of last year, 55 youths successfully completed the Sub-council 12 skills project. We are in the last quarter of the 2024/25 financial year, and will continue to invest in our youth.
In January 2025, we are planning to recruit youth from the jobseeker database to form part of our life skills project. The project aims to identify interventions in response to the challenges faced in Ward 116. It will facilitate a process where we retain or reintroduce children to the education system. We will be working with various agents to make this possible within the community.
The youth desk in Ward 116 will get more support to expand services to more people.
Our green jobs deployment continue, however, we appeal to the community not to dump in our public spaces. We looking forward to community partnerships to take ownership of the public spaces and will provide support where it is possible to beautify the area.
We are creating safe spaces for children and families within our Sub-council 12 wards, however, without the community buy-in we will not achieve anything.
The local action drug committee will be a standing item on the Sub-council 12 agenda with the vision to create voluntarily access to people using alcohol and drugs and their families who are often more affected by the addiction. We must start somewhere in dealing with the challenges.
As a Sub-council 12 project we call on the general community to support the victim support room staff and volunteers, and to provide care packs to victims who need the initial support.