People at core of Gauteng’s budget

LION’S SHARE: LARGE SOCIAL SERVICES ALLOCATION

MEC’s emphasis is on addressing ‘the ever-growing needs of our citizens’.

The demand for more social services in Gauteng has played a major role in finance MEC Barbara Creecy’s decision to allocate most of her R108 billion budget to the health and education portfolios.

“One in four South Africans live in Gauteng, and this places great demands on social departments to meet the ever-growing needs of our citizens,” Creecy said.

“In times of fiscal consolidation nationally, we developed a revenue strategy to raise R15.6 billion over the past two-and-half years to fund the increasing demands of our citizens.”

Health and education were allocated R40 billion each, while social development received R4.4 billion.

Out of education’s R40 billion allocation, more than R476 million will be used to improve the matric pass rate; R319 million will be used to improve the quality of the public schooling system over three years; R586 million for teacher development; and R630 million for early childhood development in the 2017-18 financial year.

She said R1.9 billion had been allocated to e-Learning, identified as an important area and set to be rolled out over the next three years.

From the health budget, R3.7 billion would be spent to prevent and reduce the impact of communicable diseases; implement anti-retroviral therapy; and toward TB testing, screening and treatment.

At least R9 billion was allocated to enhance service delivery in district hospitals and at community health clinics and centres.

Creecy added that a whopping R893.8 million had been set aside to improve mental healthcare services in the province.

She said the move was in line with Gauteng Premier David Makhura’s commitment to ensuring the provincial government continued to implement the recommendations of the Health Ombud Report and prioritised mental health in the province.

Touching on a R43.7 billion job creation strategy, Creecy said the province would be turned into a “huge” construction site in the coming years, mainly from the building of houses and public infrastructure.

Creecy told a post-budget media briefing that cabinet’s decision to cut costs on non-core expenses had saved R414 million over the last three years.

But she said no executive decision was made regarding cutting cost on services to the people.