Picture: The North West MEC for Education, Viola Motsumi/Facebook
By OBAKENG MAJE
North West MEC for Education, Viola Motsumi said they welcome the allocated budget of R20 575 525 000 for the 2023/24 financial year. Motsumi, who tabled her departmental budget speech on Tuesday at the North West Provincial Legislature (NWPL) in Mahikeng said this represents an increase of R 229 382 000, which is a growth of 1.1% from R 20 346 of the 2022/23 financial year.
“This continuous budget increase for education by the ANC-led government underlines an even more rationale behind the government’s classification of education as an apex priority. The services rendered by the department are categorised into seven programmes.
“The Administration is budgeted for R981 960 000, Public Ordinary Schools Education received R15 021 810 000, Independent School Subsidies for R50 866 000, Public Special School Education reis budgeted for R904 898 000, Early Childhood Development for R 979 188 000, while Infrastructure Development is budgeted for R1 297 549 000,” she said.
Motsumi further said, Examination and Education-Related Services is budgeted for R1 339 254 000. She added that, the spending focus in this budget will go towards service delivery outputs as clearly captured in their 2023/24 Annual Performance Plan (APP).
“Of course, it will also be dedicated to the pronouncements derived, respectively, from the State of the Nation Address (SONA) and State of the Province Address (SOPA), which are intended to improve access and strengthen the quality of public education delivery in the province.
“An overview of the budget distribution per programme for the 2023/24 financial year is as follows. Administration (R 981 960 000, 0,2%). The strategic goal of this programme is to ensure effective and efficient governance, management and financial support systems in the department,” said Motsumi.
She said in the current year, this programme is allocated R981 960 000. Motsumi said they were disappointed that they could not claw back their good record of unqualified audit outcomes last year. Motsumi said that the record was broken in 2021/22 when they obtained a qualified audit report for the first time after receiving unqualified audit outcomes for seven consecutive financial years.
“It emerged once again that the commitment, immovable assets, work in progress and contract management registers were the main causes of a qualified audit report for the department. In spite of this, our grip on strengthening our governance, administrative and financial systems, monitoring and evaluation, internal audit, risk management, internal controls, management of commitment and immovable asset and contract management registers and implementation of the Post-Audit Action Plan is maturing,” she said.
Motsumi said, consequently, their qualifications from the Auditor-General are becoming gradually less. She said they remain hopeful to obtain an unqualified audit report in this current financial year.
“During the previous financial year, R15 398 008 000 was allocated for compensation of employees. The above compensation budget was, among others, spent on filling office and school-based vacancies and dealing with other compensation pressures.
“We must admit from the outset that we underspent the above allocation by R 483 million. This is primarily due to the high rate of vacant posts which took a long to be filled. We have since adopted strategies to avoid the recurrence of the risk of a high vacancy rate,” said Motsumi.
She said in the current financial year, R15 406 801 000 has been allocated for the compensation of employees’ budget, which consumes 79.6%, resulting in it being the highest cost driver of the total allocated budget of R20 575 525 000. Motsumi said this is predominantly due to the inherent labour-intensive nature of the basic education sector.
“Notwithstanding the current pressure on the fiscus, the department will particularly ensure that the implementation of the Post Provisioning Norms responds adequately and effectively to the teaching needs of every school in the province,” she said.
The Guardian 