National Treasury has awarded Cape Town R412-million in performance grant-funding as part of the newly-introduced Metro Trading Services Reform grant.

This funding is provided in recognition of good governance and the sustainability reforms made in the city’s water and sanitation, energy, and urban waste management departments.

“This is a very welcome first injection from National Treasury in recognition of the progress we have made since the various budget reforms last year,” says City of Cape Town (CoCT) Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.

“This grant incentivises well-run, self-sustaining utility services for water, sanitation, energy and waste.

“These funds are being immediately injected into infrastructure projects to ensure even better basic services for Capetonians into the future.”

The main projects benefitting from this funding include R74-million for electricity grid system equipment replacement, and R35-million for looking after substations and medium-voltage infrastructure.

A further R267-million will go towards the city’s major water and sanitation programme for automated metering infrastructure that targets more predictable and reliable water and sanitation billing.

N2 Edge Safety Project
Following a recent increase in attacks on motorists travelling along the N2 highway, Hill-Lewis has also announced that the city has allocated R114-million in its adjustment budget for what is called the ‘N2 Edge safety project’.

The project aims to improve the safety of commuters, pedestrians and communities along a nine-kilometre stretch of the N2, he explains.

Aside from safety barrier repairs and reinforcements along the N2, the project will include new pedestrian crossings; ⁠improved lighting and access control; ⁠safety barriers for recreational spaces; creating safer grazing practices; and ⁠reducing the scope for illegal dumping.

“It is not fair that a small number of criminal elements are impacting the safety of hundreds of thousands of daily users of the N2, including commuters from Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain, Blue Downs, Eerste River, Mfuleni, the Helderberg, and neighbouring towns,” says Hill-Lewis.

“The N2 Edge project will improve safety alongside the city’s beefed-up highway patrols, with over 40 new metro cops deployed to the N2, backed by CCTV cameras, automatic number plate recognition and digital coordination for rapid response to help motorists.”