Six Gauteng Provincial Government departments have been allocated additional funds as an incentive to continue with their job creation efforts in specific sectors and pay stipends to volunteers.
The allocations were made in terms of the 2012/13 Second Adjustment Budget that Finance MEC Mandla Nkomfe presented to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature recently.
The departments are Education, Roads and Transport, Agriculture and Rural Development, Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation and Infrastructure Development. These departments are currently implementing successful community projects that are part of the Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) in Gauteng.
These projects have created job opportunities for people in different parts of the province, provided valuable skills and enabled others to be marketable in the job market.
Treasury believes that the continuation of these projects is important because they will create more employment opportunities, and contribute to the 196 000 EPWP jobs that Gauteng intend generating in the 2013/14 financial year.
The breakdown of the allocation is as follows:
- Education: 484
- Health: 300
- Roads and Transport: 2 743
- Agriculture and Rural Development: 1 180
- Sport, Arts, Culture and Recreation: 300
- Infrastructure Development: 644
- Total: 5 651
Meanwhile, Education has been allocated an additional amount of R110 million to cater for costs related to building of and refurbishment of school infrastructure in order to increase access to education in the province. These infrastructure projects are at an advanced stage and the funds will be used to ensure that work continues on site until they are completed.
According to Treasury’s third quarter revenue and expenditure report, Education’s infrastructure portfolio is amongst those that have recorded the highest expenditure of all departments in the province to date. This portfolio has spent more than R1.1 billion.
One of the highlights of the work done by Education’s infrastructure portfolio is the completion of a new school in Olivenhoutbosch near Pretoria, which was built using alternative materials. It is one of the four schools that would be constructed using such material in partnership with the Independent Development Trust. The others will be completed by the end of the financial year.
John Sukazi, MEC Spokesperson
Cell: 083 772 4885
Tel: 011 355 2161
E-mail: john.sukazi@gauteng.gov.za
