WHERE IS THE MONEY?
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*Province Budget shows that it will be funding less than 40% of the Premier’s promised “R1 billion per year” Safety Plan*.
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*Funding is being cut from Early Childhood Development, Drug Rehabilitation Programmes and the Education Budget*.
Statement by Brett Herron, member of the Western Cape Provincial Legislature & Secretary-General of GOOD.
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Speech delivered by to the Western Cape Legislature on the 28 November 2019.
On Tuesday during the Western Cape’s Minister for Finance’s address on the province’s budget adjustments for this year, Minister Maynier spoke about the Spekboom, which in English is called the Elephant bush.
Appropriate, because there are a few elephants in this room that we must speak about.
The first is the Safety Plan – where is it?
I agree all parties definitely need to stand together to support action to reduce crime.
We have heard a lot about a “Safety Plan”, but the fact is that no plan has yet to be presented to this Parliament.
This “working document” is not a plan. At best it is an executive summary or a vision. It tells us what but it doesn’t tell us how.
And yet this parliament is asked to support the transfer of hundreds of millions of Rands, without a plan, without any detail of where or how this money is to be spent.
The second problem is also the Safety Plan – or at least, where is the money?
Just a few months ago, the Premier promised that his Safety Plan would see us “spending R1billion per year” over three years.
On Tuesday, Minister Maynier said “we made a promise, and we have kept that promise,” but the budget he spoke about will provide just R1.167 billion of the promised R3 billion.
Where is the remaining 60% of the funds for this provincial project going to come from? Where is the money coming from?
Are we now asking our municipalities to provide the outstanding R1.8 billion in costs?
The third problem is- you guessed it – also the Safety Plan, because the budget adjustments contradict the Minister and Premier’s commitments.
Nowhere in this document does your government make any reference to the Safety Plan.
Not a single Minister acknowledges the plan or that there is a change in their programmes or objectives.
Not even the Department of Community Safety – all they do is indicate the transfer of R130m to the City.
· I welcome the Minister’s statement that he will prioritise and invest in child-centred initiatives, but his budget adjustments aim to cut funding to ECDs by R7 million.
· The Minister also says he will prioritise education, but his budget adjustment is to cut education’s staff budget by R34 million.
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The Minister says he will invest to empower people and strengthen at-risk youth programmes, but this budget will cut millions from drug abuse programmes to divert this to IT contracts.
Families are desperate for a life without violence and crime.
Promising a plan that doesn’t yet exists is irresponsible and reckless.
It demonstrates a lack of care for communities and a lot of care for media hype.
The responsible way to govern is to develop the plan, engage with affected communities, present the plan to parliament and then allocate the funding to implement it.
Your approach evidences the difference between good governance and good government. You can get a clean audit on this budget. But that doesn’t mean you made a difference in anyone’s lives.
Ends …