Speaker, the Budget that we tabled in March was one that sought to find a balance between a number of policy imperatives. The government is very determined to support and enhance economic growth in the Western Cape. But we know that this is only possible in a healthy and society. This is why we balance our economic growth interventions with a social capital formation strategy. This balance plays itself out in our entire policy framework. Our Human Resource Development Strategy balances the need to prepare learners for the world of work with the imperative to form well-rounded citizens that can make a broader contribution to society. The Strategic Infrastructure Plan balances the need to support the growth of the economy with the need to provide the poor with access to services and employment opportunities. The Provincial Spatial Development Strategy embodies this balance the most completely in its efforts to guide the provincial space-economy towards the spatial proximity of human need and economic development potential.
The 2005/06 Budget presented expenditure plans to the tune of R20,61 billion. The outcome of the above balances were presented in the form of the 4 main delivery areas of iKapa Elihlumayo:
- ‘Building Respect, Trust and Healthy lifestyles’, or Social Capital Building on which we will spend over R37 billion over the next three years;
- ‘Building Knowledge and skills’ or Human Capital Building on which we will spend R20,3 billion over the next three years;
- ‘Growing and sharing the economy’ on which we will spend R7,6 billion over the next three years, and
- ‘Government that delivers’ on which we will spend R1,7 billion over the next three years on institutional reform and the underlying support structures.
Our budget sign-up campaign asked people to sign up in support of these four areas of deliverables. On Budget Day and the following day almost 5000 people signed up. We have also asked our own staff to sign up and teachers and social workers employed by the Departments of Education and Social Services and Poverty Alleviation are already in the process of signing up. Over the next few months we will also give the rest of our staff the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment.
The areas of deliverables will be served by the iKapa Elihlumayo lead strategies that will be finalised in June of this year. The public consultation process on these strategies has in some cases already started and will intensify as we approach their finalisation. The Premier and I will lead this process over the next six months.
As we indicated in the Budget Speech, the Idasa service delivery survey will provide the people of the Province with a further opportunity to give us feedback on what we have proposed. Their input will inform the 2005 MTBPS and the 2006/07 Budget.
Speaker and members, as all new governments are wont to do we have invested heavily in developing our policy framework. This phase is now drawing to a close. While the budget listed the allocations to each of our priorities, I would now like to turn to what we will be doing with this money. I will concentrate on some of the key issues, but each Minister will provide greater detail in his or her Budget Speech.
Our shift in emphasis to the assertive implementation of iKapa Elihlumayo will be supported by enhanced Monitoring and Evaluation in each department. The Department of the Premier will be responsible for the overarching monitoring of our progress towards our goal of a ‘Home for All’.
BUILDING RESPECT, TRUST AND HEALTHY LIFESTYLES
Health
Health’s budget stands at a staggering R5.7 billion for the 2005/06 year, which is R576 million more than the previous year’s budget. This is to give impetus to the Department’s mandate that includes the following:
The Department is currently fine tuning its Health Promotion Policy, which is due to be completed in June 2005. This pro-active approach by the Department will encourage people to take greater ownership of their own health.
During the course of this year, the Department commits R15 million for social capital formation projects whose focus will be on children, chronic diseases and trauma in the Province. Closely related to this is the need to further develop and complete research work started on the burden of disease. Furthermore, outcome indicators, implementation strategies and relevant budgets will be developed to allow clear monitoring and evaluation over time.
The Department is finalising its staff establishment formula for clinics to promote and ensure equity and this will be detailed within the Department’s service plan, due to be completed in June 2005.
The Department’s commitment to training is evidenced by the fact that for the 2005 academic year, 500 bursaries have been allocated for first year nursing students, which is an increase of 180 students from the 2004 academic year. Furthermore a grant from the SETA has been secured for management training.
Accountability for proposed infrastructure spending is for the first time being housed with the Department; this is now within its Health facilities management programme. The actual service delivery remains vested with the Department of Transport and Public Works. The same arrangement has been put in place for the Department of Education.
Social Services & Poverty Alleviation
In 2004, this Department has devoted its efforts to the formulation of the Social Capital Formation Strategy. Equity and need are now the driving forces of the Department’s funding allocations. These principles speak to the redirection of geographically, functionally and historically entrenched funding. Closely linked to this, the Department intends to strengthen NGO development and capacity building of smaller and recently established NGOs that tend to be swallowed up by larger organisations. The intention is to ensure that they achieve independence and can effectively serve the people of their communities.
What remains a key challenge for this Department is to focus on its priority activities and to achieve a sufficient scale of delivery to ensure real change in our society. The Social Capital Formation Strategy provides the framework that will allow the Department to intervene at the key points in the Province.
Community Safety
The key role for the Department of Community Safety, apart from its recently inherited security function, is to reduce the overall levels of trauma in the Province. This includes addressing crime levels, but also issues such as the lack of safety on our public transport networks, in schools and hospitals and reducing motor vehicle accidents and traffic safety. In terms of trauma reduction, the Department will have an important coordinating and research role together with the departments of Transport and Public Works and Health.
The research on the Motor Vehicle Accident Intervention Strategy has meanwhile been finalized, one of its objectives being to reduce road mortalities by 5%. Through the deployment of neighbourhood watches the Department will attempt to reduce contact crime at all 168 police stations in the Western Cape. Amongst its other key deliverables, the Department will roll out 149 Hands Off Our Children projects and 5 crossfire killing victims projects to support 250 parents. The Department also leads the Social Cluster’s Substance Abuse reduction intervention. The later has been formulated and is in the process of being rolled out.
Cultural Affairs and Sport
As was indicated in the Budget Speech, this department will finalise the strategic framework document for the Western Cape leg of the 2010 World Cup by May 2005.
The department’s Cultural policy has also been made available for public comment. The policy will amongst other things determine the flow of funding to cultural bodies and museums. The Department already has a set of transformational conditions to funding for sports federations. In his budget speech the MEC will provide more detail on these issues as well as on the plans for the revival of school sport in our poorer areas.
Housing and Local Government
The Province is beginning to see impressive examples of holistic governance, whereby departments are coming together and pooling resources to achieve economies of scale. An example is where the Department of Local Government and Housing, Health and Community Safety are collaborating to set up the Disaster Management Centre. The Centre which will be called the Provincial Emergency Management and will be responsible for co-ordinating Emergency Medical Services as well as Traffic Management Services and a Disaster Management Centre. The Centre will be fully operational by 15 December 2005.
The Department of Housing and Local Government will also liaise with other departments in the IDP review process, in an effort to improve integration and alignment.
During the course of this year, the Department will develop a housing road map detailing the nature and extent of the housing backlog as well as the necessary plans and targets to address this. The approach to performance measures is also to be improved in order to incorporate key socio-economic variables like access to educational and health facilities as well as capture other indicators like the number under construction, the number completed and the number of beneficiaries.
The N2 Project aims to complete 22 000 units, over a two year period, with phase 1a being completed during 2005/06. As part of the Departments overall strategy there are plans to increase the density of housing as well as ensuring mixed usage housing in order to ensure that people are more closely located to areas of economic activity thereby promoting integrated human settlements. The under spending of R100 million in 2004/05 will be utilised to implement the upgrading of informal settlements like the N2 Gateway project, in order to speed up delivery. The N2 development will howver not detract from other projects.
The Department is currently auditing the housing waiting list in order to develop a coherent integrated housing waiting list. Interventions to increase funding include improved debt collection, as well as the identification of assets for sale that cannot be used for housing.
The targeting of youth through the Emerging Contractors Programme provides direct support to other sectoral interventions being driven by the Department of Economic Development and Tourism through the MEDS.
In order to improve the quality and speed up the delivery of houses through the Peoples Housing Process, the Department will provide technical support through the provision of “on call” architects and engineers.
GROWING AND SHARING THE ECONOMY
Economic Development
The Department of Economic Development has done extensive work on the definition of key interventions for the MEDS, and at present further priority economic sectors in the Province are being explored. Processes are also in place to integrate the agricultural sector strategy with rest of the MEDS. A comprehensive MEDS will be tabled in June.
During the course of the year, the impact of the RED doors will be carefully monitored as they are rolled out in selected municipal area to ensure that the intended impacts are realised.
A Global Intelligence Unit will be established in Wesgro to address one of the biggest constraints to exporters in the Western Cape, namely the lack of information about foreign markets. It is critical that the user satisfaction with this new service be assessed regularly, and that the service be as closely aligned to the demands of exporters as possible.
The impact of BEE and economic participation interventions has proved difficult to assess. For instance, the impact of contract and tender support offered to small businesses, in line with the Department’s focus on preferential procurement as an entry point for small businesses, is not very clear. Winning a government tender often stimulates start-ups, but they often do not survive after the tender has been completed. The RED door tracking system has the potential to shed light on this process and better inform the delivery of this type of support.
Significant new resources have been allocated to the Department for economic sector development, and the Department will be putting in place a strategy for the further development and expansion of this work. To ensure the non-profit sector bodies that drive much of this work realise the potential in these sectors, service level agreements between the Province and each of the bodies will be put in place. At present the Department is setting up service level agreements with all existing sector bodies, which will include clear measurable objectives for specific projects.
The Budget Committee has pointed out that the physical planning regulation that enables the zoning of appropriate areas for retailing liquor is a critical precondition for the implementation of the Western Cape Liquor Act, is still in the process of being passed. Delays in the implementation of this Act may have implications for collection of revenue important to the Department. The Department will work closely with Environmental Affairs and Development Planning to ensure that the preconditions are met.
Agriculture
Together with the Environment Affairs and Planning, Agriculture has been assigned the crucial task of formulating a strategic response to the growing competition in the Province for water resources, exacerbated by global warming. In doing so these departments will obtain the support and buy-in of role-players and stakeholders in the management of water in the Province, like the National Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, the City of Cape Town and other municipalities, National Environmental Affairs and Tourism, and the Department of Land Affairs.
The research and development of agricultural technology undertaken by the Department is one of the instruments we have for influencing the development path that the agricultural sector in the Province follows. Other policy instruments at the disposal of the Department include the support services it provides to farmers, the various levels and forms of education and training it provides to the industry, and its export control services. As part of the implementation of the MEDS, it is important that these instruments support the economic development path envisaged for the Province by the MEDS. After the MEDS and agriculture sector strategy become integrated, it will be important that their services be transformed to embody the MEDS.
The Department will also work on strengthening its co-coordinating role in the human resource development of farm workers. To this end, the Department will ensure that government service delivery agencies have access to farms and that provincial farm worker interventions in other departments are properly co-coordinated.
Environmental Affairs and Development Planning
The Department is conducting workshops through various consultative processes to finalise the PSDF strategy to be signed at a summit in June 2005. The implementation phase will commence in January 2006. A critical step for the Department is to ensure that there is buy-in from the municipalities in aligning their Spatial Development Frameworks with the Provincial Spatial Development Strategy.
The findings from the investigations and research on the sustainability and impact of golf courses will be used to develop guidelines for the Golf course development. These guidelines will be compatible with the PSDF strategy.
The Department will also collaborate in the formulation of the provincial response to current and expected climate changes and a provincial water strategy in a collaborative effort with the Dept. of Agriculture.
Transport and Public Works
By the end of June 2005, Transport and Public Works would have produced a comprehensive Strategic Infrastructure Plan to guide the transformation of the construction and management of infrastructure in the Province. The SIP will encompass measures to improve the management of provincial property and a coherent intervention framework for public transport in the Province, including the Klipfontein Corridor. The Plan will also define the infrastructure requirements for Soccer World Cup 2010 and how that will be supplied. The Department’s cross-departmental promotion and co-ordination roles in the Extended Public Transport Programme, and their own direct contributions to the Programme will also be covered in the Plan. Finally, the Plan will include a framework for improving the mechanisms for collecting revenue, to be developed further during the course of the year.
Through the SIP, the Department will also address a key issue raised by the Budget Committee, namely the review of the policy framework for the construction and maintenance of roads in the province. This framework will define more appropriate maintenance standards for roads, leading to a more targeted approach to road maintenance and rehabilitation, and allowing for more effective expenditure of the considerable extra resources the Department has received for roads in this MTEF.
The SIP will also put measures in place to improve co-ordination with municipalities, especially in the provision and running of transport infrastructure and in the management of public transport routes and operators. The vexed question of creating a Metropolitan Transport Authority in the City of Cape Town is also to be dealt with in the SIP.
BUILDING KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS
Education
The Department of Education has been at the forefront of developing a Human Resource Development Strategy for the Province. The next challenge is for the Department to realign its budget to the goals specified in its strategy so as to enable consistent delivery.
A key instrument through which to monitor the progress of our HRDS strategy is to develop researched, intelligent and appropriate site indicators. It is essential that the department be able to establish ambitious yet realistic rates of improvement for all levels of education and at individual institutions of delivery such as our schools, colleges, ABET centres etc. However, the achievement of these targets does not rest with the department alone, it requires the commitment of parents and communities, the involvement of key departments such as Social Services and Poverty Alleviation, Health and the Department of Economic Development and Tourism through the MEDS. Our strategy of holistic government bodes well for the achievement of these targets.
Learning also cannot take place without a motivated and professional teaching corps. One of our key challenges is to ensure that all learners have access to the best teachers that our teaching profession has to offer. We are encouraged by national initiatives to address the shortage of teachers in key areas such as mathematics, science and to a lesser extent English. A range of options are currently being investigated, which include the formulation of strategies to attract and second newly qualified teachers (in particular those receiving bursaries) to under resources schools, particularly in the fields of mathematics and science. Furthermore, we need to look at the quality and distribution of teachers within the schooling system more broadly, this includes teacher involvement in offering extramural activities, including sport and cultural activities, rates of absenteeism, years of experience amongst others.
As we are all aware learning does not only take place in schools. For this reason the funding of library services needs to be dealt with urgently. This will again be taken up with National Government. By establishing closer links between the departments of Education and Culture and Sport we are however able to further promote a culture of reading as well as the provision of information services. Progress has also been made by using the premises of at least 3 multi-purpose centers in poor urban areas to provide library services. Recent events also point to the importance and urgency with which the Department needs to address school safety. I am aware that the Department is looking urgently into this matter with the involvement of the EMDC’s.
The targeting of under resourced areas for infrastructure delivery, particularly in African communities, is a key priority for the Province. In order to facilitate this I am examining the possibility of adding approximately R90 million to Education’s budget to be used to finance accelerated school building (construction and maintenance) delivery. I will address this in greater detail in my Adjustment Estimates budget once the final numbers have been determined.
The Department is also actively targeting the expansion of Early Childhood Development, particularly for disadvantaged learners in the Nodal areas. Furthermore, educators at 357 sites have received specialised training.
As indicated in the Budget Speech, the Department of Education is nearing completion of its development and implementation plan for the Learner Tracking System. This forms one of the key interventions to monitor and improve the performance of our learners.
GOVERNMENT THAT DELIVERS
Department of Premier
The Department of Premier provides the strategic support for the iKapa Elihlumayo strategies. In doing so the Department will play a greater co-ordinating role in addition to its supporting functions through the provision of transversal services. In order to make the creation of “A Home for All” a reality, the Department acts as a linking chain between National and Local Government, thus ensuring holistic and co-operative governance. Along with this coordinating role, the finalisation of the internal HRD and Social Capital Formation Strategies are expected by June 2005, as will the Communication Strategies.
Two Task Teams are currently making recommendations regarding the re-engineering of the Department as well as examining employment equity within the Provincial Government. The success with which the Department is able to fulfill its new mandate and provide strategic direction for the Provincial Administration will depend to a great degree on the internal re-engineering currently underway.
A key priority for this Department is to improve the quality and frequency of its communication both externally with the citizens of the Western Cape and internally with the employees of the Provincial Administration. A number of initiatives have been developed including the Cape Gateway which provides an internet portal for communication. It however needs to be acknowledged that not all citizens of the Western Cape have access to such facilities. We will therefore supplement the external communications strategy with further Imbizos targeting municipalities and staff of the Provincial Government specifically.
The Department is committed to driving a government that provides quality services and is responsive to the needs of our people. However, it is essential that we are able to assess the impact of our interventions. This will be done through the development of key indicators for the Province with which we will monitor and evaluate all our interventions.
Conclusion
Budget 2005 represents the meeting up of our iKapa Elihlumayo strategy with a very generous amount of money. We have made ample provision for all the key parts of our policy intervention. Departments have already started responding to this happy juncture of money and clear priority setting. The Department of the Premier and the Treasury will continue to monitor delivery against our policy framework.
Our efforts will however only start bearing fruit when all 4,5 million people in this Province and the organisations that represent them start working towards the same set of goals. The initial indications are that the majority of people in the Province indeed share these goals. This year we will do further work to mobilise all the available resource in the Province towards the pursuit of our goals. Together we can certainly ensure that this Province becomes a ‘Home for All’ by 2014.
