By Nangamso Mabindla
26 April 2006

THE Buffalo City Council has decided that for the municipality to handle some of its responsibilities effectively, the position of executive deputy mayor needed to be filled.

In the new council's first meeting, finance portfolio head Mhleli Matika said that because of its size, the City needed to take some of the load off Executive Mayor Zintle Peter.

This was in response to a query by the Democratic Alliance's Avis Rens about why the City needed an executive deputy mayor.

"We are a very big municipality," Matika said. "We really need to have a deputy mayor to assist our executive mayor with some of the enormous responsibilities that her office has."

Some of these responsibilities included bringing investment to the city. For this to be a success the Office of the Mayor needed to be part of investment initiatives.

Such initiatives included the East London Industrial Development Zone, the Buffalo City Development Agency and the Eastern Cape Development Corporation.

"The executive mayor needs someone to be part of these initiatives, someone to be a driver in the economic development of the city. The deputy mayor will do just that," Matika argued.

Opposition parties contested the motion, with the DA asking for the notion to be deferred to the next council meeting.

"This is a big decision," Rens said. "We need to sit and think about it before accepting it. We would prefer to have discussed it in the next council meeting."

However, councillors voted for the motion to be passed, and the council resolved that a letter be written to provincial MEC of housing and local government Sam Kwelita to permit the City to fill the position of deputy mayor, left vacant by the late Des Halley.