'We won't support the Gauteng budget,' says DA provincial leader Msimanga

DA provincial leader Solly Msimanga has vowed that his caucus in the Gauteng legislature will reject the proposed budget, saying it is not responding to the interests of residents.

He alleged that core service delivery concerns were ignored and that in the debate, his party would table an alternative priority listing.

“They continue to put budgets there that are going to be just spending and not improving people's lives. The budgets that are there are not aimed at growing the economy and won't be addressing the challenges that our schools, hospitals, safety and security are facing.

“We want to make sure that the infrastructure that is falling apart in Gauteng is addressed. Somehow this budget presented here is not talking to these concerns nor are they adequately addressing very glaring issues.”

Msimanga accused premier Panyaza Lesufi of hogging the spotlight by removing all powerful departments from their original listings and increasing the responsibility in his private office of the premier.

“In fact, what I am seeing now is a continuation and an upward trend of the so-called priorities and, for us, these are what [Lesufi] is using to boost himself up instead of delivering for the people.

“This is why some of these things have been taken out of their traditional departments with their MECs, with some being taken into the premier's office where we doubt there will be a capability to play a proper governance management role in terms of how these things are supposed to be rolled out.”

Instead, the leader of the official opposition in the province said, he hoped their suggestions would be considered.

“We will not be supporting this budget. We will debate why it needs to be reviewed and why they are not talking to what the people of Gauteng are saying to us. Ultimately, we hope that sanity can prevail and that some of the things that we will table can be taken up and are going to be implemented so we can serve the people of Gauteng.”

DA provincial legislature member Ruhan Robinson alleged the province's budget would rack up a R4.4bn deficit this year.

“This is obviously unsustainable as we are looking at big vanity projects like a pharmaceutical company and state bank. Very simply, we cannot sustain this over a long period and keep running these deficit. In the previous financial year we ran up another deficit of R5.4bn — in the long run, this is not sustainable.

He slammed the province's increasingly bloated wage bill.

“One of the concerns that we have had is that we are already at the threshold of nearly 60% expenditure on our staffing component as a provincial government and that should be the ceiling — but we are seeing increasing activities in employing people into departments rather than enabling the private sector to absorb people into these departments.”

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