• Opposition parties slam Sopa as light on detail
Opposition parties slammed premier Oscar Mabuyane for failing to address how the province could effectively deal with the ongoing drought and other issues.
Following Mabuyane’s state of the province address (Sopa), UDM MPL Mncedisi Filtane said Mabuyane’s administration had neglected the eastern part of the province in announcing more projects in Nelson Mandela Bay.
“He has a lot of expansive
He’s talking about billions of rand. Only a few people will benefit and not the people on the ground
development plans on the western side of the Eastern Cape and he actually spent less than three pages on the eastern part and that is confined to agriculture,” he said.
Filtane also criticised Mabuyane for saying “nothing about Butterworth and Mthatha” on plans to revive factories.
“Does this mean they have taken a decision as the ANC to abandon the eastern part of the Eastern Cape? I pity people from that part of the province because they are going to go home empty-handed.”
ATM MPL Veliswa Mvenya said Mabuyane had some “grand but scary” plans.
“They are scary because he is talking about huge amounts, he’s talking about billions of rand. Only a few people will benefit and not the people on the ground.
“There is a lot of corruption in the Eastern Cape and he failed to report back on how many people have been arrested for corruption from last year. Fighting corruption is not just talking and condemning it,” she charged.
DA MPL Nqaba Bhanga said while Mabuyane said “all the nice things”, he failed to detail tangible plans to create jobs.
“Instead of managing Day Zero, he said zero in terms of managing water,” he added.
Reacting to plans to build 138 new schools by 2024 and address sanitation problems in existing ones, Bhanga said they had heard all this before.
“Instead they built this toilet scandal in Amathole,” he said, referring to the Siyenza toilet scheme where more than R600m was fraudulently spent.
Ten people were arrested and are out on bail for allegedly being behind the grand looting of municipal money through the failed sanitation project.
Bhanga said the multibillionrand investments that Mabuyane announced, especially at the Coega IDZ in NMB metro, were from the private sector, so it was not direct work done by the provincial government.
“We have a government that promises.
“We have a premier good with ideas, but less so with action. We need action if we are going to save this province,” he said.