Mixed report card on managing Bay’s electricity and water challenges

The purpose of this letter is to briefly consider the crisis management capabilities of the metro starting with the officials and to briefly consider how the mayor and city manager in particular dealt with this. Let me hasten to say the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality handled the recent water and electricity crises in an excellent manner. I did not expect this excellence informed by the track record of this metro over the last 30 years.

The voters should decide who takes the biggest blame out of 10, simple maths should make this an easy exercise. If you contributed to this mess you are guilty as charged in my book. I must applaud the officials, among others, electricity head Mr [Bernhardt] Lamour for his contribution and of course “Mr Water” Barry Martin as well as the CM [city manager] for his leadership and presence.

From this it can be clearly seen the officials pulled this one off — a glimmer of hope for the future. In my book, the officials run the city with oversight of the responsibility of the politicians as the law states. Excellent oversight means nothing in the absence of skilled officials. Let me get to the mayor, possibly one of the best leadership over the last 30 years of a politician during a crisis of this magnitude.