Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba has pledged to cut out luxuries, such as international travel and other non-essential projects, to focus on real service delivery. Mashaba vowed to hold local government officials accountable as he looks to secure money to reduce the infrastructure backlog in the city. To achieve this‚ Mashaba said his office decided to deprioritise certain expenditure and redirect the money to the poor. "I’m going to focus on maintenance of our infrastructure. As you are aware‚ we are sitting with more than R170bn of infrastructure backlog — electricity being the biggest one; 27% of our electricity infrastructure is already under pressure. "Today, we are a city of more than 5-million people, but the infrastructure is not really being maintained. We need to focus on electrification and provision of water in informal settlements so that our people can get dignity‚" Mashaba told TimesLIVE. Among other projects‚ he spoke of focusing on the inner-city and working with the pri...
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