The Provincial Budget Speech which was tabled on Tuesday by MEC for Finance, Economic Development and Tourism, Nompumelelo Hlophe was cause for various concerns.
Though the DA welcomes budget increases in some departments, the budget speech once again ignored the burning issues of the electricity crises and sustainable job creation. We expected MEC Hlophe to make funding available for CoGTA so that municipalities can enter into agreements with Independent Power Producers to ease reliance on Eskom. With Mpumalanga’s expanded unemployment rate of 46.7%, we were hoping that the MEC should have focused more on sustainable job creation instead of throwing money at the Fresh Produce market where the politically connected keep stalling the project to ensure more fines are paid, and at this rate, this project will never see the light of day due to corruption.
The following items were noted:
- R99.4 million increase to the Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport baseline – considering that in the previous appropriation the department mentioned how a significant shortfall to the budget would affect infrastructure programmes like the Mkhondo Boarding school and the parliamentary, we cautiously welcome the, taking their overall budget to R5,5 billion from R5,4 billion.
- Community Safety and Security budget increase from R1,768 billion to R1,778 billion, we welcome the increases, however, given that the festive season is upon us, monies could have been budgeted to hold a strong road safety campaign. The R12 Million set aside for marketing the province for tourism safety, should rather have been allocated to enhance safety on the various tourist routes and attractions where we have seen an increase of hijacking of tourists on their way to the Kruger National Park
- Increases from R1.6 billion to R1,7 billion to the Department of Social Development’s budget as a core focus will be made on social relief
- The DA welcomes the increase from R24,3 billion to R25,3 billion for the Provincial Department of Education as it will help them to deal with the shortage of Learning and Teaching Support Material (LTSM). However, we are concerned that the increase may not make a difference as the department is notorious for not spending its budgets, especially on infrastructure projects. We are also concerned that MEC Hlophe has over capitalised by providing more money to the Mkhondo Boarding school project which has over the years allowed tenderpreneurs to rob the department blind and the learners are still without a school.
The DA calls for sound financial management in the province addressing employment and electricity concerns. MEC Hlope must ensure for sustainable interventions to ensure taxpayer monies are spent responsibly to the benefit of all residents.