Closing remarks by Limpopo Premier Chupu Mathabatha during the EXCO Lekgotla at Belabela
Thank you very much Program Director for this opportunity to say a few words in closing this important EXCO Lekgotla.
We have come to the end of our EXCO Lekgotla. Over the past two days we have been engaging in robust debates, assessing the performance of this government over the past twelve months, identifying challenges we are confronted with, and more importantly, crafting the programme of action of this government over the next twelve months and beyond.
For that matter, I would like to take this opportunity to comend you for the enthusiasm with which you debated and approached the business of this Lekgotla.
The resolutions taken in this lekgotla, let alone ANC lekgotla, must therefore find concrete expression in the State of the Province Address, the subsequent budget speeches and policy statements and departments and municipalities. They are the basis of the mandate we have to serve our people.
Program Director;
It is important to note that we are effectively in the middle of our term of office. In essence, we are left with only two Financial Years to conclude the term of this 5th administration.To be more specific, we are left with the Financial Year 2017/18, 2018/19 – with 2019/20 as an election year.
We must therefore redouble our efforts and maximize the remaining two financial years to deliver on our electoral promises and mandates and commitments.
We need to use these two years or so to expedite the delivery of basic services such as water, electricity, roads and sanitation to our people. As I said yesterday, these are legitimate expectations from our people. The very basis of these expectations is the very promises we made as leadership in our election manifesto.
Program Director,
Part of what we have agreed about in this Lekgotla is the urgency of stabilizing government. It is only a stable government which will have the necessary capacity to deliver on the 10 development priorities of the Limpopo Development Plan.
These priorities include accelerating the delivery of infrastructure; poverty reduction and the creation of jobs.
This Lekgotla was also unequivocal on the issue of good governance. As you know the antithesis of good governance is maladministration. Maladministration undermines the confidence of our people in the government.
It is responsible for the emerging mistrust between the state and the society.
All government departments, municipalities and public entities must improve on governance; this include the important issue of attaining Clean audit opinions.
Moving forward we have to embark upon strengthening our institutional capacity to deliver services and ensure goodgovernance. This should include providing quarterly reports on matters related to the operation clean audit campaign.
On the matter of SEZs, we welcome the progress that has been registered thus far. At the same time, the concerns which were canvassed by the DTI in this Lekgotla cannot and should not be ignored.
What is important is that both the DTI and the province share in the collective yearning to make this Musina-Makhado SEZ a success.
We have already made appeasing public commitments to our people on this matter of SEZs. We cannot afford to disappoint them.
More-so that the success of this SEZ initiative carries unequalled potential of socio-economic spin-offs for our Province, the country,as well as the SADC region.
The MEC for LEDET is thus directed to report to the next EXCO meeting on the progress, challenges and interventions made in this regard.
By all turns and purpose there's no enough reason why the SEZ projects in the Province should not succeed.
On the important issues of education, we welcome the Turnaround Strategy by the Department of Education. What we expect is that this Turnaround strategy must be implemented without any delay.
As I have already said, we can no longer afford embarrassing situations like the ones we witnessed at the beginning of the year. These include the progressive decline of the matric results witnessed for the past two years.
Program Director;
Both the ruling party and EXCO resolved on the need to support our provincial growth points in order to release their economic growth potential. Polokwane is one of such growth point.
Our resolution in this regard is to facilitate the support to ensure that Polokwane Municipality becomes a Metropolitan Municipality within the next 20 years.
The Office of the Premier, Coghsta and Polokwane Municipality are therefore entrusted to develop a comprehensive strategy to ensure that this resolution becomes a reality.
On water infrastructure, we have developed and adopted a Provincial Water Infrastructure Master Plan. This plan was meant to help us define the water service delivery agenda of our Province.
We are now at a stage where we must implement this much reveered Plan.
In the same vein, we welcome the decision by the Department of Water and Sanitation to ensure that Lepelle-Northen Water becomes a fully-fledged Water Utility and expands its footprint to cover the entire province.
However, the need to strengthen the capacity of our municipalities, especially the Water Service Authorities, to be able to deliver water to our people in accordance with their legislative mandate is non-negotiable.
In this regard, the water multi-stakeholder technical committee that we established two years ago is therefore directed to provide regular updates on the state of water service delivery in the province. This will help us to prescribe appropriate interventions.
Program Director
We also affirmed the decision of the ruling party to establish a Provincial Commercial Bank. These must be followed up by immediate and concrete action plans.
As you know, the ANC s 52nd Conference held in this Province has long resolved on this type of state led bank.
We therefore have to move swiftly to put a technical team which will assist to drive this initiative.
Program Director;
There are many important areas and issues which were discussed over the past two days which I did not touch in these remarks.
However, I have the assurance that everything we discussed and agreed upon has been captured by the secretariat.
All your discussions and submissions will enrich the content of our resolutions. This will definitely find concrete expression in the State of the Province adress next week.
Once again, I wish to thank all of you for commitment to the business of this Lekgotla.
We have done the talking, now let us go back to implement our own resolutions.
I thank you!
