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The IFP has expressed outrage at the decision to cancel today's
programme of the NCOP provincial week in the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature
and replace it with an ANC party political workshop.

"This is a blatant example of abuse of the taxpayers' money for party
political purposes. The NCOP delegates have been invited to
Pietermaritzburg at taxpayers' expense and are expected to fulfill their
constitutional mandate. Instead, non-ANC members of the delegation have
been left in limbo as their ANC colleagues attend a party political
workshop," said IFP Chief Whip in the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature Henry
Combrinck.

The multi-party NCOP delegation was scheduled to visit two developmental
projects in Pietermaritzburg as well as the site of the Dube Trade Port
in Durban today. "This programme was inexplicably scrapped and replaced
with an ANC workshop as a platform for ANC members to debate such items
as their political programme and staff organogram," said Combrinck.

The NCOP provincial week, according to the programme supplied to all
participants, is "one of the key mechanisms by the National Council of
Provinces to achieve its constitutional mandate of representing the
country's provinces in the national sphere". "Today's alternative
programme has achieved no such thing. Apparently, the express aim of the
NCOP now is to serve narrow party political interests," said Combrinck.