Municipality gears up for visit

KOUGA Municipality will host a delegation from the Canadian municipality Prince Edward County over the next two weeks as part of the partnership agreement signed by the two municipalities earlier this year.

The two municipalities are working together on a Building Inclusive Green Municipalities (BIGM) programme, an initiative facilitated by the South African Local Government Association (Salga) and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and is funded by the government of Canada.

Kouga is one of six South African and Eastern Cape municipalities, working with Canadian counterparts on different developmental areas.

The others are Mbizana, Port St Johns, King Sabata Dalindyebo, Ngqushwa and Ndlambe Municipalities.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in March between Kouga and the County in Jeffreys Bay, committing the two to cooperate on matters of Local Economic Development (LED).

The partnership was further confirmed by the visit of officials from the Government of Canada in June who came to check first-hand which development projects Kouga was involved in.

Planning, Development and Tourism Portfolio Councillor Bryan Dhludhlu said part of the visit was around building municipal staff capacity to deliver inclusive economic development services, in particular for women and vulnerable populations.

“Activities will aim to support the municipality to enhance its service delivery to entrepreneurs and to ensure that it favours new and innovative LED approaches, catering especially to women and vulnerable groups,” he said.

There will also be a three-day LED workshop for relevant stakeholders, facilitated by Prince Edward County, from Wednesday to Friday next week

“The workshop will highlight ways in which project management is approached, with some insights on knowledge management, LED strategies, tourism assets inventory management and community consultation strategies.

“We want to make the most of this opportunity of learning from some of the best practices internationally, with our own context in mind, in order to be the most supportive municipality in development projects and programmes of our communities,” said Dhludhlu.

The Canadians arrive in Kouga on Monday and will be here until Friday, September 21.