Diakonia Council of Churches is deeply concerned about the eleventh hour postponement of eThekwini Municipality’s third Social Cohesion Conference on Monday.
As a social justice agency, we fear such a late change to the event is sure to negatively impact the City’s coffers and indeed the ratepayers. Our concern is not only the high costs involved with the event raking up more than R2 million in the estimated budget, but also whether the decision to postpone the event might have been too late for service providers to put the processes on hold. This legitimate concern begs the question of who will pick up the cost of the huge oversight and whether the City and ratepayers will incur double the costs when the event is eventually rescheduled.
We believe R2 million could go a long way towards social justice initiatives and we understand the importance of social cohesion and hope the conference will have had the desired outcomes.
We also welcome opportunities to support such municipal initiatives and share our wealth of experience to enhance social cohesion in the eThekwini Municipality for more than four decades.
Revd Ian Booth, Chairperson, Diakonia Council of Churches
Wednesday 21 June 2017