During her budget speech in the provincial legislature in Mahikeng this morning, MEC Maphefo Matsemela, says the equitable share constitutes 80% of the provincial fiscal envelope. She says conditional allocation contributes 17% with a total budget of about R23 million with the provincial own revenue contributing at least 3% to the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF). She adds that the 2019 MTEF budget amounts to R141 billion with R44 billion expected to be spent on the first of the three years of MTEF. OFM News previously reported that irate residents have been up in arms demanding service delivery from the respective municipalities across the province during violent protests. Matsemela says the allocation of the 2019 budget to different provincial department seeks to revive some of the key aspects of those departments to enable them to respond adequately to the needs of the people.

The Departments of Education, Health, and Social Development are the departments that received a total of R21 billion in the 2019/20 financial year. The three departments have been faced by an uphill battle regarding infrastructure. The Department of Education over the years has been under scathing attacks for the lack of resources, especially in and around rural areas in the province. This as the Department of Health, which is under administration, has also had its fair share of scandals with its head of the department who is undergoing a departmental disciplinary hearing after he was charged with procurement irregularities. These charges involve the payment of R30 million to the Gupta-linked Mediosa company and the misrepresentation of facts after he stated he had worked as a chief director of the department.

In 2018, the Social Development Department made headlines for all the wrong reasons as the Provincial Legislature’s Public Accounts Committee (Scopa) questioned the MEC, Hoffman Galeng, after he allegedly hired four private security guards to protect his private residence in Vryburg, using taxpayers’ money. The Chairperson of the Committee, Mahlakeng Mahlakeng, has called on the MEC to account for the allegations with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) saying Galeng used R50 000 a month to pay the alleged guards, despite spending most of his time in his official residence in Mahikeng.

OFM News