With this Budget, the Gauteng Government implements its resolve to radically alter the lives of residents of Gauteng for the better, especially the poor and the marginalised.
We will in this financial year spend over R4 billion on massive social infrastructure roll-out with a clear bias towards the townships and a procurement process aimed at benefitting those in the informal economy and the creation of jobs.
We will be on site at more than 287 locations, building 19 new schools, refurbishing close to 200 others, whilst we are doing major refurbishments at six hospitals. These are amongst our major ones and exclude our projects in community development infrastructure, such as nature reserves, heritage sites, community halls, early learning centres and old age homes.
To accelerate social infrastructure development, we shall now award projects within 45 days after advertising. It will take us only 21 days to finalise contractual matters, before the site is handed over to the contractor. We will ensure that we appoint competent service providers and that those that perform poorly will be blacklisted. We are improving Inter Governmental Relations with Client departments and local government, in an effort to improve on the identification and confirmation of land ownership, approval of drawings and EIA’s.
Our budget has increased by 8% from R1,9 billion in the 2014/15 financial year to R2,05 billion for the 2015/16 financial year and is appropriated into R437, 8 million for Administration, R1,2 billion for Public Works Infrastructure and R368, 8 million for the Expanded Public Works Program. Over and above this budget, we will also implement infrastructure projects for Client Departments with a total budget of R3,7 billion. This budget has increased from the past financial year, demonstrating confidence on improved Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development (GDID) performance, especially by departments such as Education with a budget allocation of R2,2 billion, Health with R1,3 billion and Social Development with an allocation of R85 million. Furthermore, GDID will be managing projects for GDARD amounting to R7, 9 million and GDRT for R5, 7 Million.
It is in this context that we are economically empowering historically disenfranchised groups through our Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment program which is yielding results, including localisation and the preferential procurement program. In 2014/15, we spent over R1,6 billion of goods and services on Black businesses, including Coloured and Asian owned businesses. We procured 82% of goods and services from Black-owned companies, 37% from youth-owned companies and 4% from companies owned by people with disabilities. This year, we will sustain this achievement and include companies owned by Military Veterans who fought for freedom as they also deserve a better life.
We have re-opened our supplier database for emerging contractors with CIDB Grade 4 to ensure that we procure from more township suppliers. We have also created a database for contractors with lower CIDB levels 1, 2 and 3 in order to involve more township enterprises in all development corridors. We, together with municipal leadership have successfully intervened with local contractors in Ga-Rankuwa, Westhoven, Tembisa and other communities to ensure economic inclusion of local business people.
All this work will help us to ensure that we continue to procure more than 75% of our goods and services from local companies and 30% from township enterprises in particular. In collaboration with one of our maintenance materials suppliers, we have already helped with the establishment of a factory in the Tembisa township to manufacture some of construction materials we need.
In the same way, the linen, brickwork, steel windows required for the additional construction projects at the new Thelle Mogoerane Hospital are sourced from township entrepreneurs in Thokoza, Vosloorus and other townships. We intervened with women-owned co-operatives in Westhoven who are now producing uniforms for our maintenance staff. We are no longer just talking about the Township Economy Revitalisation we are implementing our strategy.
This confirms what the Premier Of Gauteng Hon David Makhura said last Thursday in the Legislature that:
"The GDID, has increased its technical capacity and this has led to a major turnaround in spending and delivery of infrastructure projects such that 99% of our infrastructure budgets were spent by the end of March 2015" .
This does not mean there are no challenges, there are, what is important is to address these head on. One of the historic poor performance that is of concern to us is the Suikerbosrand project that has taken many years to be completed and has negatively affected the operation of the nature reserve. There is a plan to bring the project to completion by end August. The two departments and MEC’s are in discussion on this matter and will decide on the way forward.
On Radical Economic Transformation, the ANC government seeks to revitalise and mainstream the township economy by supporting the development of township enterprises, Cooperatives and SMME’s that will produce goods and services that meet the needs of township residents. To respond to the ANC’s call to expand youth economic participation, we are implementing a more comprehensive and integrated Phase 3 EPWP and CWP together with all GCR role players.
EPWP is a nationwide intervention aimed at re-orienting public sector spending in favor of infrastructure projects that contribute to addressing the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality. The Deputy Minister of Finance, Hon Mcebisi Jonas who visited Gauteng two weeks ago, on the National Siyahlola Program indicated that Gauteng is doing very well on the CWP as it is alleviating poverty amongst the poor. Led by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), we will upscale this program.
Over the past financial year, we as a GCR collective in partnership with the non-state sector, created a total of 126 104 work opportunities, including the National Youth Service Learnership Program and Zivuseni reloaded. These are real and concrete interventions against poverty amongst the poor, one single mother from Orange farm stood up at the portfolio committee stakeholder engagement and expressed her gratitude to government for taking her and her children as a single mother out of poverty.
The EPWP participants acquire technical skills in construction and maintenance and they contribute to the public assets. We encourage them as part of our exit strategy towards the end of the project duration to establish their own SMMEs or co-operatives such that they can employ other unemployed people and transfer their skills. We are working with the Military Veterans and other participants to resolve late payment of stipends through a more effective payroll system and to help them find sustainable employment or business opportunities.
In this financial year 2015/16, all sectors, especially the infrastructure sector, have to accelerate creation of Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) employment opportunities to ensure achievement of 1 million employment opportunities by 2018/19, as pronounced by the Premier. Through our entrepreneurial skills development program linked to the EPWP, we incubate SMME’s, including those owned by women, youth and people with disabilities and we are up-scaling this program due to the needs of our communities.
The GCR collective is also on track in facilitating creation of 500 000 sustainable employment and entrepreneurship for unemployed youth specially young graduates by 2018/19. To date, since the early launch of this Gauteng Tshepo 500 000 program, 9169 youth are registered with the Gauteng job portal and of these, 1 265 youth are now permanently employed by private sector companies who have partnered with Gauteng government. This happens through direct employment placement by matching existing vacancies with young job seekers.
We are at an advanced stage to complete the GPG Immovable Asset Register and we have to date verified 99% of assets. We continue with the ownership rectification of government properties. This work will result in improved and proactive utilisation of assets and reduce losses and wastage, effective management of assets to deliver infrastructure objectives such as optimising revenue generation and socio-economic benefits. We now have a draft strategy on property management which will be soon presented to the Executive Council for approval.
The strategy will recommend, amongst other things, the establishment of the Property Management Agency which will assist us to optimise the economic value of the GPG property portfolio.
This year we shall join the National Department of Public Works in the Operation Bring Back of stolen properties campaign. We will also have to improve our concerted effort to rollout Market Related Rentals.
On Radical Spatial Transformation, the ANC Government remains committed to change the spatial patterns we inherited from apartheid to integrate human settlements. In partnership with the Gauteng Planning Division, we have completed the first phase of the Gauteng Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan that will guide infrastructure development in the GCR.
We are working on the establishment of the Planning House which will be done through a Public Private Partnership (PPP). The Gauteng Planning House will create capabilities to better manage the use of land for spatial planning and public infrastructure development and will allow us to visualise where development in the short, medium and long term will occur.
We are ready with the plans to resuscitate the Kopanong Government Precinct project that will help us revitalise the Johannesburg Inner City and better accommodate GPG departments. This project has historically been postponed due to insufficient resources and will now proceed as a PPP. These projects will be show-cased at the upcoming Gauteng.
Together with the Gauteng Department of Education, we have introduced the concept of the smart classrooms. In January this year, the Deputy President, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, the Premier, Mr David Makhura and MEC Lesufi unveiled the first smart classrooms at the six pilot schools in Tembisa as a step towards paperless education. The MEC for Education has committed to accelerate this program in this financial year.
Therefore, in contributing to Modernising the Public Service, we have reviewed our ability to deliver quality public infrastructure. We have recently conducted an assessment of challenges and limitations faced by the department. As a response, we have deployed the Infrastructure Delivery Management System (IDMS) to help the Department to deliver more effectively and efficiently, in a sustainable manner.
We now have a fully-fledged Engineering Services Directorate for Health Infrastructure, headed by a Chief Director, a capacity that vastly reduces our dependency on consultants and the associated costs. We have taken innovative steps to ensure that our operations are modern, reliable and responsive. We are implementing the GP-IDMS process and fit-for-purpose business processes and systems.
We have established a payment office, amongst other key outputs, it will assist us to standardise payment times, streamline the delegation of authority signatories for payment and actualise our commitment to 30 days payment.
To demonstrate our seriousness to the reduction of fraud and corruption, we have signed the fraud prevention plan, we conduct Anti-corruption campaigns, cases of corruption are investigated and acted upon. We have improved our risk management and established forensic services to detect and deal with fraud and corruption.
Of the 38 cases of misconduct, 10 were for fraud and these staff members were dismissed. We will strengthen this work to clean the image of the department. Vetting of Supply Chain Management officials and financial disclosures are underway. We look forward to maintain unqualified audit results with less matters of emphasis for the year 2015/16.
On Modernisation of the economy, the ANC government seeks to fundamentally change the way state institutions relate to society.
We are contributing handsomely to creating a smart and green economy. The Gauteng Provincial Government has developed the Gauteng Energy Mix Strategy in order to contribute towards renewable energy generation. Our role is to implement the green agenda on Gauteng Infrastructure.
We have 77 boilers in Gauteng hospitals fuelled by coal and now a program is underway to replace these with gas and diesel boilers. The existing natural gas infrastructure will provide the backbone for delivering natural gas to the hospitals. Half of Gauteng government buildings will use green technologies by 2019. We also are undertaking the following:
The Roof-top Solar PV Rollout Program is the energy efficient project emanating from integrated demand management plan. We will be rolling out this project in this financial year. We are appointing a Transactional Advisor to develop the procurement documents by next week.
The Energy Efficiency Retrofit Program LED technology, has changed the world of lighting forever, delivering major savings in energy.
The Gauteng Government in partnership with ESKOM has conducted energy audits for all GPG’s 237 clinics with a view to replace lighting at all health care centres. We have replaced 105 381 lighting systems with LEDs out of 282 333 across the Province, which accounts for 37.3%. We expect these lights to run for 3 years. We will also install 37 smart-meters at six of our hospitals to measure energy.
The Gas Supply Program involves migration from coal and diesel to gas for 21 hospitals with 24 boilers. We aim to complete the conversion of all our 53 coal powered boilers within this Financial Year. This too will be done through a PPP process.
The Trigeneration Program provides the ability to simultaneously generate power, useful for heat and cooling from the combustion of natural gas. Cooling is achieved using a Combined Cooling and Heating system’s heat, carefully matched and closely coupled to an absorption chiller. Six hospitals are earmarked for this program.
The procurement process for these projects is already underway and we will commence construction early in this financial year.