The Eastern Cape government has voluntarily asked the National Treasury to “reallocate” more than half a billion rand meant for schools’ infrastructure to other provinces in a bid “to secure future allocations”.
This was revealed by provincial director-general (DG) Marion Mbina-Mthembu while addressing the office of the premier (OTP) portfolio committee meeting yesterday.
Mbina-Mthembu said the province decided to give back the R530-million to Treasury as they could not spend it “due to lack of capacity”.
The committee meeting sat at the Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg due to constant water outages at the Bhisho legislature.
The DG said the reason money was given back, despite huge school infrastructure challenges in the province, was to prevent Treasury from decreasing the province’s future infrastructure allocation for school infrastructure.
The Daily Dispatch reported recently that Treasury has since reallocated the money originally earmarked for building schools, revamping old ones, providing furniture and maintaining existing school infrastructure, to other provinces.
Of the R1.59-billion given to the provincial education department last year, 33% or R530-million, was not spent.
Treasury said the money would go to Gauteng (R400-million), Limpopo (R80-million) and Western Cape (R50-million).
“We met and reported the underspending,” the DG said. “In terms of rules of appropriation, if you disclose such up-front, you get a reprieve from the budget cut in the following year. So we knew that from an appropriation perspective, failure to do so would reduce our budget.”
Mbina-Mthembu also revealed to the committee that there was another allocation of R600-million that was to be given to the province last October, but was “withheld” by Treasury due to poor spending pattens.
“We agreed that it was better for Treasury to withhold it and give it to a province that will use it. We did that on condition that if we have sufficient capacity in 2017-2018, they will give it back,” she said.
Mbina-Mthembu was responding to committee chairman Sicelo Gqobana who asked if poor monitoring mechanisms may have been the reason why they could not foresee that the money would not be spent as required.
“We discovered last November that the implementing agencywere not able to do anything about it.
“If that is not poor monitoring, why was it not picked up early by OTP so we would not be in such a quagmire?” asked Gqobana asked.
Gqobana said something must be done to strengthen monitoring.
“OTP is our only hope in dealing with issues of governance, so if its limping, there is going be a problem in the province,” he said.
UDM MPL Thando Mpulu asked if that money will “for certain” come back and whether there would be capacity to spend it if it did, to which Mbina-Mthembu replied, “it may”.
Mbina-Mthembu said the province was now “trying to push expenditure by end of business today by R1.1-billion” in the education department.
EC voluntarily gives back R530m meant for schools’ infrastructure to Treasury
This was revealed by provincial director-general (DG) Marion Mbina-Mthembu while addressing the office of the premier (OTP) portfolio committee meeting yesterday.
Mbina-Mthembu said the province decided to give back the R530-million to Treasury as they could not spend it “due to lack of capacity”.
The committee meeting sat at the Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg due to constant water outages at the Bhisho legislature.
The DG said the reason money was given back, despite huge school infrastructure challenges in the province, was to prevent Treasury from decreasing the province’s future infrastructure allocation for school infrastructure.
The Daily Dispatch reported recently that Treasury has since reallocated the money originally earmarked for building schools, revamping old ones, providing furniture and maintaining existing school infrastructure, to other provinces.
Of the R1.59-billion given to the provincial education department last year, 33% or R530-million, was not spent.
Treasury said the money would go to Gauteng (R400-million), Limpopo (R80-million) and Western Cape (R50-million).
“We met and reported the underspending,” the DG said. “In terms of rules of appropriation, if you disclose such up-front, you get a reprieve from the budget cut in the following year. So we knew that from an appropriation perspective, failure to do so would reduce our budget.”
Mbina-Mthembu also revealed to the committee that there was another allocation of R600-million that was to be given to the province last October, but was “withheld” by Treasury due to poor spending pattens.
“We agreed that it was better for Treasury to withhold it and give it to a province that will use it. We did that on condition that if we have sufficient capacity in 2017-2018, they will give it back,” she said.
Mbina-Mthembu was responding to committee chairman Sicelo Gqobana who asked if poor monitoring mechanisms may have been the reason why they could not foresee that the money would not be spent as required.
“We discovered last November that the implementing agencywere not able to do anything about it.
“If that is not poor monitoring, why was it not picked up early by OTP so we would not be in such a quagmire?” asked Gqobana asked.
Gqobana said something must be done to strengthen monitoring.
“OTP is our only hope in dealing with issues of governance, so if its limping, there is going be a problem in the province,” he said.
UDM MPL Thando Mpulu asked if that money will “for certain” come back and whether there would be capacity to spend it if it did, to which Mbina-Mthembu replied, “it may”.
Mbina-Mthembu said the province was now “trying to push expenditure by end of business today by R1.1-billion” in the education department.
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