Cape Town – Opposition parties in the Western Cape Legislature decried Premier Alan Winde’s fifth state of the province address (SOPA), saying he had little new to say beyond rehashed statements and a “cheap spin” on the reality gripping the province’s citizens.
Winde on Thursday delivered this year’s SOPA to a province burdened with a housing and school placement crises and those in the opposition benches said these issues weren’t “adequately addressed”.
In an attempt to address the crippling power cuts, Winde said he requested the provincial Treasury to allocate just over R1 billion in the upcoming three-year budget period.
“This is proposed to respond to the short-term impact of load shedding now on government services, secure diesel fuel to keep essential public services running during load shedding (and) provide poorer households with emergency power packs that help reduce the impact of load shedding on daily tasks,” said Winde.
Another intervention to address the power crisis is the municipal energy resilience plan, a local government-level programme that develops, supports and builds capacity at municipalities to implement renewable energy projects.
“Across the Western Cape, 6 756 PV applications have already been approved by municipalities, with a total capacity of 197 MW… municipalities across our province, just like Cape Town, are budgeting for diesel,” said Winde.
“The unfortunate issue is that this money is being diverted from critical municipal services due to a national government failure and inability to act.”
On education, Winde said the number of learners in Western Cape schools had grown by an average of 17 900 learners every year for the past five years.
“This year, we have already placed over 120 000 Grade 1 and Grade 8 learners and are in the process of placing the remaining 1 400 learners, the vast majority of whom were extremely late applications made in January this year,” the premier said.
“To maintain our high standard of education and manage our increasing learner population, the Western Cape Education Department recently appointed 1 143 additional teachers and we’re not stopping there. In the year ahead, we plan to add a further 430 first-level educators.”
The ANC said Winde wasn’t in sync with reality.
“This speech is deeply uninspiring,” said ANC’s deputy chief whip, Khalid Sayed.
“Premier Winde in his SOPA congratulates WCED for learner placements, when thousands of learners remain at home with no places in schools (and) when certain schools have nearly 80 learners crammed in class,” he said.
“PPE corruption in education as found by SIU didn't stop despite this Covid ad hoc committee (the) premier brags about. And to top it, no action taken against officials implicated.
“Winde is not in sync with reality. I would have expected clear plans to deal with the unplaced learner crisis and an announcement of action taken against officials implicated in corruption,” added Sayed.
The EFF's Wandile Kasibe said: "We are of the view that the speech of the premier was mainly a regurgitation of stuff that he has said before. Issues of high rate of unemployment among young people, there was no specific plan, no programme...he was not giving any clear plan as to how he will combat (it),“ he said.
"The issue of energy continues to be a problem, there is R1bn over three years for energy - this opens up room for corruption like we've seen with the PPE."
The DA on the other hand said they welcomed Winde’s speech as it did what “President (Cyril) Ramaphosa was unable to do” which is highlight the province’s people-centric approach.
Weekend Argus