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The National Planning Commission’s (NPC) Chairperson and Minister in the Presidency, Trevor Manuel, yesterday led a team of Commissioners to Mpumalanga to launch a public consultation process with provincial leaders on the NPC diagnostic overview and elements of the vision statement which was released on 09th June 2011.
The NPC commissioners met with provincial and local government, leaders from civil society today and engaged in dialogue about the 9 challenges identified in the diagnostic overview. NPC Commissioners Chris Malikane, Jerry Vilakazi and Miriam Altman accompanied Minister Manuel to Mpumalanga.
Premier Mabuza of Mpumalanga opened the gathering. He indicated that the establishment of a National Planning Commission is an innovative and groundbreaking initiative and will hopefully help to define the South Africa we seek to achieve. This he said will call for a long term strategy that will give direction but also lay out the hard choices and sacrifices that will need to be made. He concluded by explaining that the province has massive developmental potential and that indeed massive strides have been made in developing the province, such as reducing the levels of poverty, increasing access to basic services, employment and education. However more could be done especially in the area of unemployment, especially among youth.
The Chairperson of the Commission in his opening address unpacked the tough challenges identified by the commission that South Africa needs to overcome in order to reduce poverty and inequality. These challenges include: too few South Africans are employed, poor quality education especially for poor black children, continuing apartheid spatial patterns that marginalise the poor, the prevalence of corruption at different levels in our society and unevenness in service delivery, divided communities, crumbling infrastructure that limits growth, a high disease burden, and a resource intensive development path that is unsustainable.
Minister Manuel said that the NPC would be bold and decisive in developing the plan that must be submitted to cabinet on 11 November 2011.
He called on provincial leaders to use this opportunity to make sure that submissions made to the NPC development plan address government’s focus on the five key priorities, which include education, fighting crime, health, employment and rural development.
The NPC has commenced a three-month public consultation to help build a national consensus about the road ahead for South Africa. So far a team of Commissioners have visited KwaZulu Natal, Eastern Cape, Free State and Limpopo.
Minister Manuel and the Premier called on all South Africans to avail themselves and make submissions on the NPC’s development plan through all NPC communication platforms including the social media.