Picture: North West Premier, Bushy Maape/ Facebook
By OBAKENG MAJE
The North West Provincial Government (NWPG) has allegedly returned the R445 million budget allocated for a conditional grant to the national treasury.
This was part of R1,063 billion during the 2021/22 financial year.
According to the Member of Provincial Legislature (MPL) and Democratic Alliance (DA) North West Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (COGHSTA) spokesperson, Freddy Sonakile, these conditional grant funds were intended to improve bulk infrastructure, ensure provincial roads maintenance, establish early childhood development centres and expand the National School Nutrition Programme in North West.
“It is shameful that the provincial government neglects to improve infrastructure, while the North West residents continue to experience one of the worst service delivery failures in the country.
“In response to the DA written questions, the North West MEC for Finance, Motlalepula Rosho indicated that the provincial government departments failed to spend over R1,063 billion during the 2021/22 financial year,” he said.
Sonakile said, the North West Department of Health failed to utilise over R256 million, while the North West Department of Public Works and Roads failed to utilise nearly R380 million. He said the North West Department of Agriculture and Rural Development forfeited over R85 million to National Treasury.
“The failure of these departments to spend the conditional grants will have a devastating impact on residents of the province. This will also impact the conditional grant funding allocation to the province over the next financial year, resulting in less development in North West.
“The North West is in an advanced state of general decay due to the inability of the ANC-led provincial government to ensure improved service delivery and infrastructure development,” he said.
Sonakile said the residents of North West cannot afford provincial departments losing 41% of their conditional grant funding. He said the DA demanded a detailed consequence management plan from the embattled North West Premier Bushy Maape over the conditional grant funding under expenditure.
“It is Maape’s job to monitor the spending patterns of his departments. While we note that R619 million was approved by National Treasury to roll over into the next financial year, the provincial government’s track record in effective spending of conditional grant funding leaves little confidence that it would be able to spend allocated funding in the next financial year.
“Action must be taken and during the SOPA debate on Tuesday last week, we asked Maape to resign in the interest of the residents of North West,” said Sonakile.
He said Maape’s government’s poor performance justifies this call and should he fail to resign, the least he could do is to remove and replace his incompetent MECs with competent individuals.
Meanwhile, the North West MEC for Finance, Motlalepula Rosho said, the current challenges experienced by departments are largely on the basis of capacity including slow implementation of their procurement plans that contribute to the slow spending by the departments.
Rosho said, her department is working with those affected departments continuously to improve spending and ensure value for money.
“All risk factors that hinder spending and provision of service delivery are currently being addressed by the accounting officers of different departments and it is anticipated that the previous years’ performance would be improved.
“We assess monthly Section 40 reports of departments and provide these reports monthly to Broader Extech and Quarterly to EXCO, Provincial Legislature, and Audit Committee,” she said.
Rosho said the feedback reports to the oversight structures constitute the commitment by the provincial treasury and NWPG to improve expenditure performance through robust monitoring, evaluation, and tracking budget implementation by departments.
She said the feedback also provides an opportunity for the accounting officers to account for expenditure performance including service delivery targets.
The Guardian 