Madam Speaker
 

My colleague, Honourable Nt'sekhe, has given a penetrating analysis of the budget we are debating and I will not revisit the areas she has dealt with; needless to say, I am in complete agreement with her comments and criticisms.

Overall, the budget has the following characteristics: while funding for a number of programs and sub-programs has increased, the budget gives the impression of being unfocussed; funds in many instances are not being channelled where they can be most usefully applied.

As an example, Program 5, Development and Research, has a whopping allocation of almost R550 million, increasing by 8% over the previous year, to “provide development programs” to empower communities, which is laudable, but almost impossible to quantify. Would reprioritising funding not have a greater, more immediate impact if used in programs like substance abuse and rehabilitation or child care and protection, the latter incidentally having lost almost 20% of the previous year’s funding? This is not a question of making certain programs more important than others, but of using scarce funding for the best outcomes.

Substance abuse gets less than half the funding of R&D. On the subject of the Province’s rehabilitation centres, while the drug problem grows relentlessly, many centres suffer from poor infrastructure and inability to fill professional staff positions and there are cases, raised with the MEC, of centres not able to register because of deficient infrastructure.
 
Still on rehabilitation, I strongly recommend that the MEC investigate the Chrysalis Program in the Western Cape, as a project which is both successful and value for money.
 
The food banks are an area of concern, Speaker. With an allocation of R74 million, serious concerns exist in a number of areas, given that the ordering and delivery of food parcels is entirely in the hands of NPOs. There appear to be few or no controls in place to be able to monitor whether these processes are in fact benefitting small local businesses and farmers.
 
Lastly, the targets used in the budget are not given with comparable overall demand figures for a particular service, an issue which has been raised in several meetings with the Department. APPs are meaningless unless there is some idea of total demand, be it for rehabilitation, early childhood development, persons with disabilities or any other categories. Good budgeting is based on the concept that funding must follow demand.
 
As indicated by my colleague, the Democratic Alliance cannot support this budget.