Modern, Growing, Successful Province

Treasury Budget Vote 2013/14

ADDRESS BY MR. J BLOCK (MPL) MEC FOR FINANCE, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND TOURISM TO THE PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE ON THE
OCCASION OF TABLING BUDGET VOTE 8 FOR PROVINCIAL TREASURY

24 May 2013

Honourable Speaker Honourable Premier—Mrs Silvia Lucas
Members of the Executive Council
Honourable Members of the Provincial Legislature
Executive Mayors, Mayors and Speakers of our Municipalities
Heads of Departments, Municipal Managers and Senior Managers
Chairpersons and CEOs of the Provincial Public Entities
Officials of the Provincial Departments
Distinguished Guests
People of the Northern Cape
Members of the Media
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen

Introduction

Let me first and foremost salute all of you gathered here today for prioritizing to attend Provincial Treasury budget vote speech; your presence plays a very critical and outstanding role in ensuring that together we continue to improve the lives of the people of the Northern Cape for the better.  When people overwhelmingly voted the ANC back into power in 2009, they were giving us unqualified mandate to speed up the pace of transformation and service delivery.  We should understand that we carry the hopes of our people, and we dare not fail them. Our democratic mandate puts more responsibility to work harder to change the lives of our people for the better.

Five months into the year, we wake up with the reality that the ruling party held its successful conference in Mangaung to shape, improve and cement its future to better the lives of South Africans. We wake up with a sudden reality of the emergence of political parties that are not only competing for political space, but doing so by attempting to find faults with what this Government has been able to do since 1994.

Honourable Speaker, this adds more responsibility and urgency on our part to speed up the pace of service delivery; we need to assure our people that we are succeeding to build an efficient public service that is sensitive to the needs of the majority of the people we serve.  Poverty, unemployment and inequality remain the most serious challenges facing our people.  Our programme of action going forward, based on the National Development Plan, should reflect our endeavors to tackle these and other socio economic issues adequately.

Honourable Speaker, through the stewardship of this Government we are ready and prepared to work together with opposition parties and external stakeholders to enhance service delivery in our Province.  fifty eight years ago, in 1955, the people of South Africa, assembled at the greatest Congress of the People in Kliptown, declared amongst others: “We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people.”

Our greatest expression of gratitude go to the masses of our people for confidence they bestowed on the African National Congress to continue leading South Africa as the only agent for change and transformation for a better life for all.

Honourable Speaker, in everything we do, we will continue to strengthen our interface with these masses and critical social players as we seek to find solutions to challenges of our times.   In doing so, we will not shy away from pointing out difficulties as we seek to map out strategic interventions.  This becomes more so in the light of the likely impact the current melt down will have on our capacity to realize our core electoral mandate.

We need to support the ideas and mitigating plans that Government is initiating to assist in reducing high rate of unemployment in our Province, especially to our youth.  With salaries being a major source of income for the majority of our people in Province, unemployment directly increases both the number of people that are destitute as well as the extent to which they are-combined with many other socio economic indicators, these point toward the ravaging impact of the global financial meltdown on individuals and households in the Province.

These are moments and times of hard choices that need courage and vision for long lasting solutions.  We draw our inspiration on the steadfast and visionary leadership of our President and the Premier for acknowledging turbulent times within which we operate in the current epoch with the attendant emphasis on the spending on key priority areas as articulated in the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF).

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Office of the Premier 
Private Bag X5016 
Kimberley 
8301

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