By ROUX VAN ZYL
Finance Reporter
DEVELOPMENT consultant Christelle Bartlett has been appointed to drive the East London harbour expansion project.
This job requires her to strengthen the business case for the R5 billion port expansion project and to advise the Buffalo City Municipality’s Expansion steering committee on an action plan to secure national funds for the project.
The committee was established by Mayor Zintle Peter last year in response to a research document compiled by the city’s economic leaders.
The document showed that the expansion had the potential to secure R15bn in investments and create 60000 new jobs, but failure to go ahead could place 16500 jobs on the line and result in a R7bn loss in existing investments.
“This is a strategic project for the Eastern Cape with obvious benefits for the neglected eastern half of the province. It forms a critical linkage through the Kei Rail project with the province’s Asgisa (Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of SA) projects,” Bartlett said yesterday.
She was appointed last week.
The Eastern Cape currently has two Asgisa projects, including an expansion of the province’s timber and forestry industry and the Umzimvubu Basin Water Management project – both situated in the Transkei.
During her six-month contract Bartlett will be expected to sell the harbour expansion at the Presidential lekgotla in May and ensure that it is adopted and budgeted for in the Treasury’s mid-term review.
Bartlett was confident yesterday that she would interest the national decision-makers in the project. “I’m totally passionate about development and investment in the provincial arena,” she said.
Bartlett is no stranger to development and investment promotion as she has been involved in high-level government teams that have facilitated large investments in the province, such as Canadian aluminium smelter Alcan and Steinhoff, presently building a wood processing plant at Ugie.
Over the past 17 years Bartlett has worked for the national Department of Land Affairs, Provincial departments of Housing, Local Government and Traditional Affairs and Economic Affairs, Environment and Tourism, the Amathole District Municipality as strategic manager and, more recently, as a development consultant.
Bartlett was chief-of-staff under sacked economic affairs MEC André de Wet.