Appropriation Bill for floods not on cards yet

THE National Treasury has indicated there was no need for a Special Appropriation Bill for the KwaZulu-Natal floods because there are already funds allocated through various systems of government.

Mampho Modise, senior official in the Treasury, told the standing committee on appropriations yesterday that they had already allocated R1 billion to deal with the floods in KZN.

Other funds will be allocated to deal with the state of disaster in the course of the year.

President Cyril Ramaphosa had also announced various resources and more funds would be poured into KZN after the floods led to the loss of life and damage to infrastructure.

Parliament has set up a special committee to oversee the use of funds in the province. The president has also deployed thousands of soldiers in the search and rescue operations.

Modise told MPs the budget that was allocated this year takes into consideration the issue of the floods.

“The budget in its current form takes into consideration the floods. We have the Disaster Management Act.

“There are different ways in which the disaster is going to be funded. Municipalities’ financial year ends in June. Therefore, they can use some of the money allocated for the grant to augment some of the funding needed for the disaster. We have allocated money for human settlements and co-operative governance in terms of the disaster grant and that is a billion.

“The departments have sufficient amounts to move some funding that is appropriated to deal with the disaster … if the money is not sufficient the departments can apply for unforeseeable and unavoidable expenditure. We are going to use the contingency reserves to deal with funding requests.”