Honourable Speaker

Earlier this year this House adopted a Local Government departmental budget of R309 million. In the bigger scheme of things, this is a drop in the ocean in relation to the total Western Cape budget.

The budget of this department and every department is directly related to the Provincial Equitable Share Formula as it is simply not enough to erase years of budget cuts and future pressures. Whichever way you look at it, the Western Cape, and similarly Gauteng, gets short-changed by National Government.