Cango Caves’ progress praised by three Western Cape Ministers
Oudtshoorn, 26 September 2018 – Three Western Cape Provincial ministers have lauded the Oudtshoorn Municipality for a positive turnaround of the Cango Caves which was facing a brink of being closed in about three years ago, due to management and financial difficulties.
The three provincial ministers that addressed members of the media in press conference held at the Cango Caves yesterday were Dr. Ivan Meyer, Western Cape Minister for Finance, Mr. Anton Bredell, Western Cape Minister for Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning and Mr. Donald Grant, Minister for Transport and Public Works.
A report tabled by the Oudtshoorn Municipality states that, in 2017 the Cango Caves received a record number of visitors in total 270 000 people. In the years before the intervention, the caves were seeing low numbers of below 150 000 visitors per year and dropping. Where the caves had been lossmaking for years, the new interventions and ongoing work has seen the past three years turn into profitable ones. For the 2018 year the net profit was R1.27 million.
“The Cango Caves is a strategic tourism asset for the greater Oudtshoorn and entire region, and I’m happy to see progress can be attributed to good management, sound financial management and political stability,” said Minister Meyer. “Oudtshoorn has in the past been in the news for wrong reasons; this time, we want to paint a new picture, what we have seen in the past two years, is that Oudtshoorn is out of that bad picture”. Minister Meyer thanked his counterparts; the Western Cape Department of Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, Department of Finance and his Finance Department for what he called “a package put together to help Oudtshoorn”.
Talking about good Local Government Minister Bredell said: “When the Oudtshoorn council was stabilized and with our support the caves have been saved. Some of the first things we did was to rehabilitate the Cango Caves waste water treatment works. It was the first time in ten years that had been done and it has done a lot to address water problems at the caves.”