SIYABONGA SITHOLE
Tshwane mayor Randall Williams has accused ActionSA, the EFF and the ANC of tarnishing his image through misleading information about the land lease deal for power generation in the city.
Williams was this week accused by the coalition partners and opposition parties in the city council of meddling in administrative duties and instructing municipality officials to sign off the recently withdrawn proposal. It would have seen the City receive investment of over R26 million land lease of two of its power stations.
In a statement on Wednesday, Williams said the parties were hell-bent on peddling misleading information on the public participation report on the proposed lease of land on which Tshwane power stations are located.
The mayor says the City of Tshwane received an investment proposal from a consortium that sought to lease the land on which the city's coal-fired power stations are based to install gas turbines which had the potential to add an additional 800 megawatts to the city's power grid.
He says with the current Eskom crisis, this proposal would have presented the City with an opportunity to solve and advance its energy crisis.
"I felt it is critically important that the lease proposal be brought to the attention of the residents of Tshwane to effect their public inputs. Furthermore, the investment proposal presented an immense economic benefit as it would have injected approximately R26 million of investment into the City over the long term, "Williams says.
The mayor said there was no proposal on the table by the City and that there was no tender process which would have exposed the City's finances to risk.
"The City is therefore not pursuing a tender process. It is simply an investment proposal that the City received to lease the City's land which we intend to take for public participation process," the mayor adds.
Williams says the power stations on which the land lease proposal seeks to use are old and need an investment for which the City does not have funds to put back into operation. This was why such an investment would have assisted the city to realise its goals of renewed power generation.
"These are 70-year-old, coal-fired power stations that have systematically aged and become obsolete. The City does not have immense funding required to put them back into operation again and we must explore options that would allow the City to move forward," he said.
The mayor states that the recently withdrawn report contained simple recommendations, including calling for public participation over land use.
"Rather than engaging on the content of the report, opposition parties such as the ANC and EFF and our coalition government member, ActionSA, sought to politicise this matter and attack the leadership of the City and myself,“ the mayor added.
To tarnish his image even further, Williams says opposition parties circulated an audio recording of an internal meeting which was taken out of context.
"Anyone is welcome to listen to the audio. I have nothing to hide. This was a meeting consisting of robust discussions and brainstorming to consider what processes the city should use when it receives the investment proposals," Williams said.