A city that works.
Works for its residents, businesses, and investors in terms of delivering reliable basic services and maintaining infrastructure, managing resources, cutting red-tape and getting things done – in a safe, healthy and stable environment.
Works for tourists and business visitors by supporting tourism attractions and the hospitality sector to offer a warm Friendly City welcome and memorable experience.
A city that works too in the sense of seeing more of its citizens employed, because it offers an enabling environment for business to set up, thrive, and create jobs.
A pipe dream? I don’t think so.
If our experiences of the past 18 months since declaration of the Covid-19 global health emergency, and the past few weeks of unrest in our country, have taught us anything, it is that by working together, we can make a meaningful difference.
As a Board member of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber and leading the Roads and Infrastructure Task Team over the past few years, I’ve seen the value of business putting its case to local government, understanding each other’s interests and goals, and working hand-in-hand to further these.
I’ve witnessed what was achieved by business interacting openly with local and provincial government departments, all pulling together to drive our local response to the Covid-19 pandemic – setting up and equipping a field hospital, for example, and putting private sector resources into upgrading public hospitals to cope with the expected influx of patients.
We can see it in the work being done, collaboratively, to address the current water crisis in which parts of the city, starting with KwaNobuhle, will run out of water.
We know that we lose 35% of our water to leaks, and that 10% of total water losses take place at schools, due to lack of maintenance as well as vandalism. By working together with the municipality and other stakeholders, including the provincial education department, we have made a concrete effort to address this, with 21 of the highest water-using schools adopted by local businesses to date, providing assistance with repairs and future water security.
We saw the value of diverse stakeholders standing together to keep our metro safe while unrest and looting were rolling through Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal – demonstrating just what is possible when we work together, when we are willing to be open-minded and to cross boundaries, towards a common purpose of saving the economy and its associated jobs.
In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are encouraging our members and businesses in general to work with the government vaccination programme and establish corporate vaccination sites to serve employees and surrounding communities.
What Nelson Mandela University has done with making its campus health facilities available for vaccinations for staff, students, their families and the surrounding community, is a great example. So too are Volkswagen SA and Continental Tyre SA’s efforts to provide on-site vaccinations to employees and their family members.
Some shopping malls are even giving over parking areas to public testing and vaccination sites, while a number of churches have also become vaccination facilities.
It is absolutely critical that the pace of the vaccination roll-out is accelerated so that herd immunity can be achieved, and much-needed economic recovery initiatives can be kick-started, and so the private sector’s role here is highly valuable.
Together with the heart-warming scenes of ordinary citizens standing together to clean up public spaces and business premises in the aftermath of riots and looting, this all shows what we are capable of achieving together in a crisis, as active business and active citizens.
Now we need to turn what we have been able to do in these times of crisis into what we do every day, as a matter of course.
This a key part of my vision for the Chamber moving forward, that we continue drawing diverse stakeholders together to work for the common good of providing an enabling and stable environment for business to thrive and to bring down an unsustainably high level of unemployment.
The other keys to take us forward include elevating our focus on small businesses and entrepreneurs as they are critical to job creation; and improving the ease of doing business in Nelson Mandela Bay. Our Bay Grow helpdesk is a good start on this, having helped with 154 business queries over the past year to unravel red tape – and we aim to strengthen this service further.
Given recent events in KZN and Gauteng that have highlighted how crucial safety and security are to business stability, the Chamber has placed safety and security as a renewed priority focus area.
Lastly, at the same time as creating an enabling environment in the present, we need to look at our future readiness for an increasingly digital and greener economy, with a stronger focus on the Chamber Think Tank as a space for nurturing out-of-the-box thinking and pursuing innovative solutions.
Yes, we undoubtedly have challenges. But I do believe that by pulling together we can maximise our many opportunities and natural advantages and build a city that works for all.
Loyiso Dotwana is the President of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber.