By Nangamso Mabindla
19 November 2004

BUFFALO CITY municipality is confident of retaining the regional Vuna Award it won last year when it was voted the best municipality in the province.

The 2004 Provincial Vuna Awards will be held at the East London City Hall on Wednesday, November 24. The awards are an initiative of the Department of Local Government, in partnership with the National Productivity Institute, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and the South African Local Government Association.

They aim to identify the best performing municipalities, to encourage excellent service delivery and to assist under-performing municipalities and empower them to do better in the future. Last year the City beat runners-up Inkwanca Municipality (Molteno and Sterkstroom) and Amatole District Municipality as the best municipality in the Eastern Cape.

Buffalo City Mayor, Sindisile Maclean says the City has since improved its service delivery to the people. "We did not rest on our laurels - we continued with delivering good services to our people," he says.

Following its win, Buffalo City opened a R150 000 sports complex for the community of Mngqesha near King William's Town and built a new R400 000 community hall and play park for the community of Sweetwaters in King William's Town.

"We also opened a brand new swimming pool for the Zwelitsha community - these are basics which the people need to succeed. From these facilities we're looking to produce world class athletes," Maclean says. The City also has a number of housing projects aimed at eliminating its 75 000 housing backlog. These include the Haven Hills Housing Project; the Nompumelelo Housing project in Beacon Bay; the Chris Hani Housing Project in NU 11 Mdantsane and other projects around the city.

The mayor was impressed with the recent the groundbreaking HIV/Aids Prevalence Study targeting municipal employees. "We wanted our people to have confidence in our commitment to fight this killer and we want to have healthy employees in order to deliver excellent service to our people."

City Manager, Mxolisi Tsika, echoed the mayor's words, saying the City had made significant strides since winning the inaugural Vuna Award last year. "We have a lot of projects that we've used in our presentation to show that we've improved on last year's performance," Tsika says.

According to Tsika the City had also improved its relations with communities, the business sector and the youth. "We've done this through our ward committees," he says. The City now had close ties with all sectors of the population. "We have a lot of projects done for the community. That is enough evidence that we're ready to defend our title as the best municipality in the province," he says.