The City of Cape Town has two strategies which can bolster social and economic development, mayor Patricia de Lille said.
|||Cape Town - The City of Cape Town has two strategies which can bolster social and economic development, mayor Patricia de Lille said on Thursday.
“We are faced with a public policy issue: a structure of local government that needs to adapt to cater for the social and economic needs of a great many more people than it was designed for,” she said.
The economic growth and social development strategies had been developed to address these needs and should be viewed as “two sides of the same coin”.
“You cannot speak of creating a city of opportunity for everyone if you have not planned for the needs of the most vulnerable. And you cannot hope to permanently lift people out of poverty if you do not attract job-creating industries and businesses that provide the prospect of employment.”
The social development strategy sought to provide jobs for people who were excluded or at risk of exclusion from the economy. Its other aim was to build safe households and communities.
The economic growth strategy proposed institutional and regulatory changes that enabled the city to be globally competitive but environmentally sustainable.
“It identifies how we leverage our trade and sector development functions to maximum advantage with the right provision of infrastructure,” De Lille said.
She said these two reports were complemented by a range of policies the city council was considering. - Sapa