Born in Isipingo, Mia aims to ensure that communities receive responsive, accountable and effective service delivery.
His six-point community priorities include improving and maintaining roads while upgrading stormwater drainage systems; maintaining verges and keeping the streets clean; promoting safe, dignified and affordable housing; working towards consistent access to clean and reliable water; strengthening initiatives that improve public safety and reduce crime; and investing in education, skills development, recreation and employment opportunities.
“eThekwini is a great city with enormous potential, but we cannot ignore the serious challenges facing residents. We therefore seek to build a municipality where officials are appointed for competence and integrity, public procurement is transparent, corruption is met with consequence, basic services are treated as fundamental municipal responsibilities, businesses are given an environment in which they can create jobs and municipal finances are managed prudently,” said Mia.
He said the water service issues would be a “first emergency,” and his immediate plan would be to establish a 100-day Water Recovery Programme.
This would include identifying the worst-performing water zones and prioritising them according to water losses; moving from a reactive system to a maintenance culture; accelerating metering and meter replacement; attacking illegal connections and commercial losses fairly and lawfully, and ring-fencing water infrastructure expenditure.”
For Mia, improving the city’s revenue collection rate means focusing on collecting what is legitimately owed, improving billing accuracy, protecting indigent households and recovering municipal losses before asking residents for more money.
Mia also supports independent lifestyle audits for senior officials; wants to establish stronger whistleblower protections; and a new initiative for the Mayor’s Office – a Mayoral Community Accountability Programme.
This will include quarterly public accountability sessions, ward-level service delivery hearings, a public Mayoral Performance Dashboard, community monitoring committees and an Annual State of the Municipality Accountability Report.
Source: https://thepost.co.za/news/2026-10-24-ethekwini-mayoral-candidates-set-out-plans-for-water-finances-and-service-delivery/