Issued by: Gauteng Legislature - Office of the Secretary
The Gauteng Provincial Legislature regrets the error in today's (23 November 1995) front-page report in the SOWETAN newspaper, which erroneously suggests that the Legislature has exceeded its budget allocation for the translation of all draft Bills into the four official languages in the province.
In his response, Mr Giles Mulholland who is quoted in the report and is the legislature Head of Proceedings, said "it is unfortunate that the reporter misunderstood that the figures I gave her were budget figures for the current financial year, and not figures of what has already been spent for the purpose".
"As can be seen from the article itself, we only started trans- lation in September of this year, so that the article gives the incorrect impression that we spent R1 million, as opposed to budgeted for it", Mr Mulholland added.
Furthermore, he noted that contrary to the inference in the report, the present budget of R1,7 million for printing "is for the general printing requirements of the Legislature, and not exclu- sively for printing Bills which have been translated".
(signed) MOEMISE MOTSEPE - Media Liason Officer
(Issued by the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, Communication Department)