Chairperson, hon delegates, ladies and gentleman, thank you very much for your warm welcome. I have great pleasure in introducing the Provincial Budget and Expenditure Review to you today.
The tabling of this review in the NCOP provides an important opportunity for South Africans to reflect on our provincial system. It is also useful for us to remember that the current constitutional system is the result of our negotiated settlement. We are now 15 years into our democracy and there is no doubt that great progress has been made on the delivery of services and on the embedding of the system.
No one can deny that there are more children attending school today than at any other time in the history of our country; there are more people accessing health services now than 15 years ago; our housing programme is deemed historic internationally; and there are many such examples of our successes. This year's review, which we table today, highlights this undeniable progress.
However, as South Africans, we have to look at the next step we have got to take and not just at our achievements. This review also then provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the impact of government spending on the lives of ordinary citizens.
Is the quality of services at a level that has had a lasting impact on the lives of our people? Has the education system, with the expenditure that we have put into it, delivered the skills needed for the economy to grow and to foster social cohesion? Why is it that our education outcomes are lagging behind other comparable countries? Despite the historic delivery on housing, did this contribute to sustainable communities where our people can work, sleep and play in peace? The answers to these questions will, without a doubt, suggest that we have many challenges before us before we can realise the goal of a better life for all South Africans.
I am of the view that the review that I table in this House today will allow you and the NCOP to ask these tough questions and to undertake this interrogation. It should be a tool that you can use effectively to exercise your oversight responsibility, to challenge us and people at provincial level to work smarter and to be efficient and effective in the period ahead so that we achieve the developmental goals we have set for ourselves.
Provincial budgets have increased by R100 billion between financial years 2005-06 and 2008-09. By 2011-12, provincial spending will stand at R339 billion and would have more than doubled since the 2005-06 financial year. The growth in the budget should allow us space to strengthen our education system, ensure effective service delivery on health services and expand social services to our people.
I remain concerned that the outputs and outcomes are not in line with the massive investments we are making. What could be the underlying reasons for this mismatch between the huge sums of money that we have put into education, health and social development, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the social and other outcomes that we expect from it?
What is it that we could do better? What is it that we are not doing correctly? What is it that we are not doing properly in the service delivery chain of our country? These are the questions we all need to ask and ask more vigorously. If we don't ask these tough questions, we will be endorsing poor performance and we will be endorsing the fact that these billions of rands that we do have and have invested in these various services are not being used productively. When departments in our provinces come to report to us on the funds that we have appropriated, what questions do we ask them and what questions should we ask them? These are difficult and unpopular questions, but I implore you to have these frank conversations in a much sterner way than we might have done until now.
But let's not focus on the negative; let's look at the road ahead of us. Yesterday you had an opportunity and the time to look at this document carefully with the assistance of tertiary officials. Today is the time for you to recommit with us to provide better service delivery and ensure that we have better value for money.
I am told that many of you have made very interesting suggestions, and I thank you for that, to address the challenges that we face. Let me highlight some of these: Firstly, there is a need to change the culture of our Public Service from self-serving to serving our communities. One can't emphasise this strongly enough and we hope that your voices will get much louder than they are at the moment, to ensure that we do, in fact, get better value for money and that hard-earned taxpayers' contributions to the South African fiscus is not abused, as it might be in many instances.
Secondly, norms and standards should be developed to guide our delivery and these should include norms and standards in terms of the schools that we build, the support that we give to schools and the basic standards for sustainable communities. Here again I think that much more can be done than we are doing currently to ensure that there are universal norms on the one hand, with appropriate deviations where that might be necessary for specific provincial conditions.
Thirdly, there is a need to modernise the delivery mechanisms. Why is it that a soft drink company can deliver soft drinks, or newspapers, for that matter, to thousands of outlets on time without any leakage, and yet our clinics are without drugs and medicines, and our learner support materials arrive late or never arrive at all?
Fourthly, contract management must be strengthened in our provinces. This should ensure that there is alignment between delivery and payment and that we avoid any unwarranted escalation of costs. Not only should there be alignment between delivery and payment, but there should be alignment between payment and real delivery, because many payments take place without any delivery taking place.
Fifth, supply chain management needs to be strengthened. National Treasury and its provincial counterparts will be taking a strong lead in this particular regard.
Sixth, provincial treasuries must on a quarterly basis present their section 32 spending numbers to the relevant committees as a matter of routine, and these committees must align their processes to start building a culture of accountability. I want to offer, on behalf of National Treasury, assistance for your committee to empower you to understand those numbers and to interrogate those numbers and to hold the provincial treasuries accountable.
Seventh, national and provincial governments must also take the lead to realign budgets from noncore to core areas of service delivery. What we need to put a stop to is when money is budgeted for health, it must be spent on health, and not on consultants or frills that a particular political office bearer might have in mind that has nothing to do with improving the conditions in which our people live or the services that they actually receive.
Lastly, there must be consequences for failure in the same way that there is reward for excellent performance. Action against nonperformance must be stepped up. One of the things that South Africans are guilty of is being too compassionate with ourselves, so we don't take nondelivery or nonperformance seriously and everybody is resting in the comfort that if they don't deliver it's ok, their job is still safe and there won't be any consequences.
Unless there are consequences - and that can be anything from naming and shaming to getting fired - no human being takes any performance requirement seriously; whether that is in the work environment, in the public or private sector, or any other environment, the same rules apply.
So, join us in making sure that there must be consequences for nondelivery, there must be consequences for tender fraud and there must be consequences if you have actually engaged in corruption.
This is a step in the right direction, the kind of conversation that we had yesterday. There should not be any nonaction on our part. Our people cannot continue to suffer while we sit on the sidelines and do nothing when we have the power to do so much more. We have achieved much, as I have said, in the past 15 years and we should build on those strengths and continue to improve the lives of our people and that is that we must be able to bring the promise of a better life for all into being a reality at a day-to-day level for our people.
I believe that the foundation that we have laid over the last 15 years is a very strong and powerful one. We should be proud of the fact that we have actually built a whole new constitutional system in less than 15 years on the kind of negotiated settlement that we have had and that is something that we can write in the history books.
But unless we build on that foundation and unless we progress in the kind of directions that your own comments have indicated, we will lose and chip away at that particular foundation and so I hope that you will work with all of the other office bearers at a provincial and local government level to build on that 15-year foundation. Learn from what this review tells us about our performance and make a commitment to much better performance as we go forward. Thank you. [Applause.]
Thank you, hon Minister, I actually thought that one of the members would stand up and move a motion about the wonderful workshop we had yesterday. They haven't done so, but let me repeat the statement that I made in the workshop yesterday.
We started with this workshop two years ago, and it was the first time yesterday that we had an intense discussion on the document that had been given to us. I have never seen members so dedicated in deliberations. Normally when you hold a workshop at Parliament, by 5 o'clock there is no one left as they all have to be at other meetings, or in their offices to take calls, etc.
They were disciplined until the last minute; everyone was there until the end. I want to congratulate them; everyone did a very good job. Even I myself couldn't slip out to go to all the meetings that I was supposed to attend - I had to stay until the end.
I would like to say to the members that that particular document actually gives us information that will assist us in performing our oversight work function. The Minister is quite correct in saying that we need to use it everywhere we go and ask those hard questions, and not just take it and put it in drawers where it will gather dust. We want to thank you, Minister, for organising that workshop. It was an eye-opener for us.
Last week we had a provincial week - that is where we spend time in the provinces doing our oversight function - and everybody actually said that we should have had this workshop before going to our provinces. Next time we will plan it that way, so that we get this information before we go. Again, thank you very much. I think it was a wonderful workshop. I would also like to thank your staff; please tell them that they have done a very good job. Thank you very much. [Applause.]