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Eastern Cape Finance MEC, Mlungisi Mvoko, says his Education counterpart, Fundile Gade, will have no excuse not to procure stationery and textbooks for schools in advance, after allocating the lion's share of the provincial budget to him.
Delivering his budget speech on Tuesday, Mvoko allocated R38.5 billion, of the total of R86.428 billion in this financial year, to the Provincial Department of Education to improve access to quality basic education.
At the beginning of the school year, several schools governing bodies in the Eastern Cape closed schools that did not receive their learner support material on time.
MEC Mvoko said the Province was also continuing to support the department’s provision of adequate Learner Teacher Support Material at schools, setting aside an amount of "R2.130 billion for 2022 Medium Term Economic Framework period, with R654.075 million allocated in 2022/23 for the annual procurement of textbooks and stationery for all learners in Grades R to 12."
He joked that "MEC Gade would have no excuse not to procure, in advance, in this financial year for next year," he said.
The Provincial Treasury also allocated R4.668 billion to the department’s National School Nutrition Programme over 2022 MTEF. "For 2022/23, we are allocating R1.494 billion to benefit 4 941 schools in the province with over 1.6 million learners."
Meanwhile, the Department of Health received the second biggest allocation is the Provincial Department of Health which received R27.3 billion.
"Of this year’s allocation, an amount of R1.567 billion is allocated for Health infrastructure and a total of R4.692 billion over the 2022 MTEF period, for maintenance and repairs, upgrades and additions, and rehabilitation and refurbishment for health facilities, including new infrastructure assets.
Mvoko noted that the bulk of this year’s budget goes to the social cluster in the amount of R69.8 billion, R13.6 billion to the economic cluster, and R2.9 billion to the governance cluster.
"We should be worried that the Compensation of Employees (CoE) accounts for 65.4% of the total provincial budget in 2022/23. This leaves 34.6% for the provincial government to fulfill its mandate of delivering services to the people of this province," he said.
