{"id":17181,"date":"2021-10-08T13:18:19","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T13:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/?p=17181"},"modified":"2021-10-08T13:18:19","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T13:18:19","slug":"cesa-president-sugen-pillay-joins-stakeholders-at-crucial-infrastructure-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/cesa-president-sugen-pillay-joins-stakeholders-at-crucial-infrastructure-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"CESA president Sugen Pillay joins stakeholders at crucial infrastructure conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

8 October 2021<\/em>. The panel discussion on the National Infrastructure Plan 2050 was one of the most eagerly anticipated sessions at the Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium – South Africa (SIDS-SA) on Thursday, 7 October. The President of South Africa, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, was the convener of the event, which included government ministers, large asset owners, leading private investors and fund managers, MDBs, developers, technology innovators, key advisors and more. The event aimed to facilitate alignment with the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and South Africa\u2019s National Development Plan (NDP), as well as to ensure access to greater and economical sources of sustainable funding.<\/p>\n

Panellists in the National Infrastructure Plan 2050 session included Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Patricia de Lille; Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA) president, Sugen Pillay; Dr Miriam Altman from the National Planning Commission; Nick Smallwood, CEO of the United Kingdom\u2019s Infrastructure and Projects Authority; special advisor to the CEO of NEPAD, Professor Tandeka Nkiwane; and Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly, the World Bank\u2019s country director for Africa.<\/p>\n

Moderated by well accomplished journalist, Peter Ndoro, the panel discussion was nothing short of insightful with CESA\u2019s Pillay representing private sector companies in the consulting engineering space who happen to be critical stakeholders in South Africa\u2019s ambitious infrastructure drive. In his opening remarks, Pillay mentioned that consulting engineering companies are interested in the implementation of the National Infrastructure Plan 2050. \u201cIt is a plan we wholeheartedly support, and I believe we have a number of these plans, and we are slowly getting to a point where we can see how they are going to take effect, with implementation imminent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Talking about the triple challenge of inequality, poverty, and unemployment, which the plan seeks to address, Pillay mentioned that CESA has been encouraging its member companies over the last two years to be mindful of this in every project that they embark on. \u201cIn every project we implement, we need to ask ourselves these questions – how do we make this a reality and how do we contribute through projects, so that such projects become vehicles for poverty alleviation and job creation,\u201d stated Pillay.<\/p>\n

One of the key challenges identified by Pillay is the capacity of the state, which has been an integral part of his presentations when addressing different audiences throughout the year. \u201cThere is acknowledgement that there is a lack of skills in certain areas in the state and people are going to be key if you want to deliver on this plan. We have ideas on how these can be addressed so we can develop capacity where it doesn\u2019t exist,\u201d stated Pillay.<\/p>\n

The CESA president also didn\u2019t hold back on infrastructure spend and procurement which he regards as a key challenge. \u201cThe supply chain function cannot be a back-office function, it needs to be a strategic function if any of our public sector institutions want to deliver on the mandate they have been given,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In his closing remarks, Pillay said we need to implement the plan urgently. \u201cAlluding to what Minister de Lille said at the CESA Infrastructure Indaba in 2020, the patience of our people is running low, and as the private sector, we want to partner with the state, and we want to make this a success\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CESA Contact details:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Thabiso Dlamini<\/p>\n

Account Manager<\/p>\n

Tel: 079\u00a0098 4863<\/p>\n

thabiso@swmcommunications.co.za<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 October 2021. The panel discussion on the National Infrastructure Plan 2050 was one of the most eagerly anticipated sessions at the Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium – South Africa (SIDS-SA) on Thursday, 7 October. The President of South Africa, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, was the convener of the event, which included government ministers, large asset owners, leading private investors and fund managers, MDBs, developers, technology innovators, key advisors and more. The event aimed to facilitate alignment with the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and South Africa\u2019s National Development Plan (NDP), as well as to ensure access to greater and economical sources of sustainable funding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cesa","category-press-releases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17181"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17182,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17181\/revisions\/17182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}