BHISHO – In the revelations made in the course of this week in the Eastern Cape Legislature’s standing committee on public accounts, a lot of money was unused and had to be sent back to the National Treasury in the start of the new financial year for critical infrastructure in the province. A review of the first two months of the financial year(May & June) revealed that the main offenders being the Departments of; Education, Health and Human Settlements.
A total of 265 of the 366 construction projects for new schools and education development have not being recorded, leaving only 101 projects being done by the Eastern Cape government.
Only R24,3 million of the R147 was spent,which was only 16,5%…the rest had to be sent back. The provincial Health Department only started 26 of 49 projects which make up R14 million of the R39,9 million set aside by the national government. The Department of Human Settlements in the province only used R26 of the R40 million of which 16 of the 55 million recorded no expenditure. A bit better than the other major offenders but not good enough considering the state of housing in the Eastern Cape.
The Eastern Cape Provincial government continues to underperform despite funding from National Government and its people suffering and looking for a better future outside the province. The question is what will happen to the people who have no choice but to stay? The Provincial government has the funding to start projects, projects that will employ the citizens of the province and employment that is heavily needed to save people from poverty.
This has been revealed by Eastern Cape Democratic Alliance shadow MEC for finance in the province Yusuf Cassim member of parliament(MPL).
