The DA in Mpumalanga suspects that the Provincial Budget Speech which was tabled on Tuesday by MEC for Finance, Economic Development and Tourism, Nompumelelo Hlophe, was another Fiscal Dumping from an ANC Administration that is aware that it may not come back.
Though the DA welcomes budget increases in some departments, we are seriously concerned that the budget speech once again ignored the burning issues of electricity crises and sustainable job creation. We expected MEC Hlophe to make funding available to create alternatives for the 2,5 million Mpumalanga residents who are about to be directly and indirectly affected by the Just Energy Transition. According to the Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, as Mpumalanga is moving towards Just Energy Transition, 5 Power Stations and 15 coal mines will be decommissioned by 2030 with 2,5 million residents (about the population of Texas) to be affected. We expected the MEC to dwell deeply in this matter as it will have serious consequences across the province; instead, she dumped millions of rands in projects that have been stagnant for years.
The MEC dumped an extra R167,7 million for “completion of the Mpumalanga Fresh Produce Market, a project which started in 2013 and envisaged to be completed in 2018. But it is now 2024, the Provincial Government has already spent over R2 billion on the construction of this project, a project which was initially supposed to have been completed in 2018 at less than R400 million. Surprisingly, the provincial government is still dumping more money on this project where the politically connected keep stalling the project to ensure more fines and bribes are paid.
The DA is also suspicious of the MEC’s sudden dumping of millions of rands to the School for the Blind and Deaf which is still a pipedream in the province 14-years later. The school was supposed to have been built in 2014, but there’s still nothing to show for it. So, it was a surprise to the DA today when MEC Hlophe announced that her department has allocated R100 million for this school. This is nothing but another fiscal dumping from the Mpumalanga Government as we suspect that this much needed school will not be constructed anytime soon.
Another concern is that the Provincial Government continues to dump millions of taxpayers’ money on the Mkhondo Boarding School, a project that started in 2018 and to be completed within 18-months at an estimated cost of R200 million. Fast forward to March 2024, over R600 million has been spent on this boarding school’s construction. Now an extra R32,4 million is dumped on this project. How long are Mpumalanga taxpayers expected to fund projects that are left incomplet
The DA has also noticed that MEC Hlophe did not specify how much has been allocated to the useless Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency (MEGA) which has been used for years as a cash cow for ANC Comrades. Instead, the MEC said that the R1.4 budget of the Department of Economic Development and Tourism includes allocations to entities like MEGA, the Mpumalanga Economic Regulator (MER), and the Mpumalanga Tourism & Parks Agency (MTPA).
The DA will not allow situations of fiscal dumping as we approach the National Elections when the departments and entities are supposed to be making a meaningful impact on the lives of Mpumalanga citizens. We will closely monitor how every penny of the overall allocated budget of R61.6 billion is spent by provincial government departments and entities.