Eastern Cape ‘voluntarily’ gave back education millions
THE Eastern Cape government has voluntarily asked the national Treasury to “reallocate” more than half-a-billion rands meant for schools infrastructure to other provinces in a bid “to secure future allocations”.
This was revealed by provincial director-general Marion Mbina-Mthembu while addressing the office of the premier portfolio committee meeting yesterday.
Mbina-Mthembu said the province had decided to give back the R530million to Treasury as they could not spend it “due to lack of capacity”.
The committee met at the Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg due to water outages at the Bhisho legislature.
The DG said the reason money had been given back, despite huge school infrastructure challenges in the province, was to prevent the Treasury from decreasing the province’s future allocation for school infrastructure.
Of the R1.59-billion given to the provincial Department of Education last year, 33% or R530-million, was not spent.
Treasury said the money would now go to Gauteng (R400-million), Limpopo (R80-million) and Western Cape (R50-million).
Mbina-Mthembu said another allocation of R600-million that was to be given to the province last October had been “withheld” by the Treasury due to poor spending pattens.
“We agreed it was better for the Treasury to withhold it. We did that on condition that if we have sufficient capacity in 2017-2018, they will give it back,” she said.