Premier Chupu Mathabatha: Limpopo Office of the Premier Prov Budget Vote 2015/16

Budget speech of the Office of the Premier delivered by the Premier of Limpopo Mr Chupu Mathabatha at the Limpopo Provincial Legislature, Lebowakgomo (Vote 1)
 

Madam Speaker and Deputy;
Members of the Executive Council;
Chief Whip of the Ruling Party;
Chairpersons of Portfolio Committees;
Esteemed Members of the House;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and gentlemen;

Let me start-off by extending my most sincere appreciations to this august House and the entire residents of our Province, for a heroic and most dignified sent off to the late Minister Collins Chabane, his two Protectors, Sergeant Lesiba Sekele and Sergeant Lawrence Lentsoane over this past weekend.

I hope that in the conduct of our affairs as public representatives, we will be guided by their unflinching commitment to the service of our people.

Madam Speaker;

On Saturday the 21st of March our country celebrated the National Human Rights Day.

On this day, South Africans are reminded about the sacrifices that accompanied the struggle for the attainment of democracy in our country.

This day also marked exactly 55 years since apartheid police shot and killed 69 of the protesters at Sharpeville, many of these victims were shot while fleeing.

This tragedy came to be known as the Sharpeville Massacre and it exposed the apartheid government’s deliberate violation of human rights to the world.

This year’s commemoration has once again provided us with an opportunity to reflect on progress made in the promotion and protection of human rights.

Madam Speaker,

Over the past 21 years, the democratic government has used the budgetary resources and processes to advance the cause of human rights for our people.

Our budget is known as the people’s budget necessarily because of its bias to the needs of the people, especially the poor.

Over the years, our budget has built houses for the poor, electrified thousands of households, connected thousands of households to clean drinking water, provided decent sanitation to our people and rolled out infrastructure projects that stimulated the growth of our economy and provided jobs for our people.

All these, and many other programmes of our government have helped to restore the dignity of our people and advance their inherent human rights.

Madam Speaker;

We are presenting this budget vote under very hostile global economic conditions.

As I said during the State of the Province address, we have revised down projections of our province’s growth rate to 3% in the light of the current performance of the global economy.

This means that we are operating under difficult conditions which are not necessarily of our own making.

Outside these external factors, we will have to navigate internal factors such as inherited backlog of service delivery and the ever present reality that resources are not unlimited.

These realities must be balanced with our legislative obligations and the expectations of our people.

It is in this context that both the Minister of Finance and our MEC for Treasury cannot be more correct when they say we must learn to do more with less.

The time for luxuries is indeed over.

We must not only be able to account for the monies we spend, we must also be able to show value for these public resources as and when we spend them.

We have listened and will continue to heed your advice MEC Phala that ‘this is the period of belt-tightening...the period of reducing inefficiency and waste, (the) period of enhancing cost- containment plans and (indeed) the period of reinforcing the austerity measures’.

As the office of the Premier, we will lead by example in this regard.

We commit ourselves to the scrutiny of this august House and other relevant statutory bodies in the utilisation of any cent we receive from the public purse.

We will work hard to ensure adherence to the constitutional obligation that we must utilise these resources in an efficient, economic and effective manner.

Madam Speaker;

MEC Phala spoke in elaborate terms on the withdrawal of Section 100 (1) (b). Without repeating what the Honourable MEC has said, I must however emphasise that this decision by the national Cabinet is a result of our hard-work and consistent adherence to the ethos of corporative governance.

On this front we have also established a Task Team led by the Acting Director General to monitor this implementation and production of a final report by the end of this month.

The Office of the Premier again reiterates and echoes President Jacob Zuma’s words of caution on the unjustified use of consultants in government work.

The President is right, as Government we cannot continually use consultants at the expense of the expertise within the public service. As I said when I first addressed this house in 2013, public servants must be rightfully skilled and accordingly placed.

Madam Speaker;

The bold plans we have announced during the State of the Province Address would be difficult to achieve without the Office of the Premier that is able to provide strategic direction on policies and programme of the entire Provincial Administration.

The Office of the Premier is further tasked with the mandate to coordinate the functions of the Provincial Administration and Departments. The responsibilities of this office go further to include the monitoring and evaluation of service delivery and governance in our province.

Madam Speaker;

As I have alluded earlier on, our utilisation of these resources is guided by the ever-present reality that resources are not unlimited. Over and above this, we also take our guidance from the objectives of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).

The PFMA promotes the objective of good financial management in order to maximise service delivery through the effective and efficient use of the limited resources.

It is clear from these objectives that there is simply no room for wasteful expenditure, unauthorised expenditure, fraud and related financial irregularities when dealing with public resources.

We shall as the law requires, act in a prudent, cost effective and efficient manner.

Madam Speaker;

It is my firm belief that one of the finest ways to honour the victims of Sharpeville massacre is for us to prudently utilise the limited resources at our disposal to advance the dream of a better life for all our people.

This is what those who were massacred on March 21, 1960 would have wanted us to do.

Madam Speaker;

As the Office of the Premier, we will utilise our allocated resources in this Financial Year to coordinate the functions of the Provincial Administration and Departments. We will do these in order to assist the Provincial Government to achieve objectives as set out in the Limpopo Development Plan.

Madam Speaker;

To operationalise its constitutional and legislative mandate, the Office of the Premier has three functional programmes, these programmes are:

  • Administration
  • Institutional development and
  • Policy and governance

Programme 1: Administration

Madam Speaker;
Administration as a Programme in the Office of the Premier is entrusted with the responsibility of providing administrative support to the Premier, Executive Council and the Director General in fulfilling their legislative function and promotion of good corporate governance.

In this regard, we will utilise our allocated budget to strengthen financial management systems, empower the office of the Director General and the Premier Support Unit to be able to discharge the mandate I have referred to.

We are impressed with the recent audit outcome from the Auditor General which considered our financial statements to be unqualified. Our commitment in this financial year is to build on this audit outcomes and rectify all the challenges as pointed out by the Auditor General.

These would obviously help us in achieving a clean audit. We also call on all other departments to commit to improve in financial management and clean audits.

Programme 2: Institutional Development

Madam Speaker;
Institutional Development as a programme ensures that policies, processes and systems that enable the provincial Administration to deliver services are in place.

I indicated during the State of the Province Address that the process of handing over all disciplinary cases to the provincial administration by the section 100 Administrators is well underway.

This, as I said, will enable the provincial administration to proceed with these disciplinary cases and conclude this as soon as it is reasonably possible.

In an effort to bring government closer to the people, we are continuing to interact with communities through EXCO Outreach Programmes.

We have specifically tailored our Outreach programme in such a way that it is the people themselves who do the talking while government listens.

We will be continuing with this important outreach programme so that as government we are able to share with our people their experiences, their frustrations and service delivery expectations.

Programme 3: Policy and governance

Madam Speaker;
The programme of Policy and Governance in the Office of the Premier enables the office to implement the mandate of planning and coordination.

In this area of work the focus is on Inter- Governmental Relations, Provincial Policy Management, Special Programmes and Programme Support Policy and Governance.

Through this programme area, we will also be monitoring the implementation of the Limpopo Development Plan, in particular the progress relating to the attainment of the 10 High level Developmental Goals.

In this regard, I am happy to announce that just two days ago, we held the first workshop on the implementation of the LDP.

This platform has laid a firm basis for the policy direction of the LDP. Our course is now very clear.

Madam Speaker

In our State of the Province address a few weeks ago, we mentioned advanced preparations for the launch of the Human Resource Development program.

It is my pleasure again to announce that the launch indeed took place in Polokwane a few weeks ago, and the skills development plan has received much accolades.

Madam Speaker

The government has also maintained a 2% employment of people with disabilities at Senior Management level in all departments.

In order to address the challenge of lack of capacity to mainstream disability in departments, we will be continuing with training programmes in areas such as disability management which includes sign language and sign language interpreting, orientation and mobility.

We encourage all departments and municipalities to roll out a similar training program going forward.

The government has developed a Gender Equity Strategy which enables it to implement the gender equity programmes. This Strategy will enable the Province to monitor gender equity programmes in all sectors.

We will be monitoring the implementation of this Strategy to ensure that all departments meet the 50% representation of females at Senior Management level.

Also in this programme area, we will be channelling resources on initiatives that are aimed at advancing the development of young people in the province.

In conclusion, Madam Speaker, I wish to thank the house for the support, especially the Portfolio Committee responsible for Administration, its chairperson and members.

We appreciate your oversight work, and please continue to ask us the difficult questions so that our people should not be short- changed. We are up to the task.

Madam Speaker;

It is my honour and privilege to table before this esteemed House, the 2015/16 budget vote for the Office of the Premier for appropriation.

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