Deputy Chair and hon members, we also welcome the opportunity to respond to the report from the committee. We welcome the report.
As the Eastern Cape, we note and appreciate the committee's recommendations, particularly on some aspects that still need further debate. Of course we welcome the point made that there are matters that need to be attended to. If these matters were attended to, they would make the committee have another view of some of the proposals that are on the table. In this regard I would like to speak about the issue of spending on resources that are made available to provinces, particularly conditional grants in the Eastern Cape.
We have, for a considerable time, been confronted with challenges that really do not bode well in terms of our spending. We have taken measures to correct the situation. There are improvements that we can already see but, going forward, we have made a commitment that we will have zero tolerance of underspending. We take quarterly reviews on performance from accounting officers, including MECs in their collective as the executive committee so that we can correct the situation.
I am making this point because in our province, according to available data, we currently have in excess of 4,8 million people living below the poverty line who require very catalytic and focused public and private investment in order to improve their lot. For them the equal opportunities the speaker who spoke before me referred to are a distant dream that they are not likely to have, given the conditions they were left in by the system that was preponderant in this country for a number of years. I talk here of people who need quality roads in order to access just economic opportunities. I talk here of people who need decent schooling in the form of facilities that have not been readily available for a number of years.
We welcome most of the interventions that this Division of Revenue Bill is speaking to. I speak here particularly on the grant to attend to infrastructure backlogs as this relates to education.
We also want to say that to ensure that we have sustainable communities we will be focusing extensively on the improvement of some of our small towns because, without economic livelihoods in these towns, there will not be any opportunities for people to prosper so that we can deal decisively with issues of poverty and joblessness. It will only be when such economic opportunities are created that the situation can be changed.
Working together with national departments and public entities, we are looking at massifying their collective ability so that we can bring about change in the situation. We do think that, on an ongoing basis, we may need to look continuously at the equitable share funding formula because there are quite a number of variables that change from time to time.
In fact, another variable that we would like to place firmly on the agenda when that time arises has to do with the cost of providing services, particularly for people in the far-flung areas. The cost of providing, for example, a house in the city of Cape Town is one thing. If one talks about the rural community of Madwaleni, the cost of providing a house to a beneficiary there is incomparable to that of providing a house to a beneficiary in the city of Cape Town. Yes, there may be people changing their places of abode. But in terms of the cost of providing services, these are things we need to look into.
Of course we have been working with the National Treasury. We have undertaken that we want to have a much closer collaborative effort with them to ensure, on a continuous basis, that they are brought in to assist wherever that is needed.
This honourable House has in the recent past been presented with an intervention that was proposed by the Department of Education and which we welcome very much. We hope that this House will continue to play its oversight role. We would like to make that effective and efficient at the earliest possible time, so that the process does not take much longer. We would like to work with the national Minister, who is here. We have to have all hands on deck to ensure that the matter is addressed.
On behalf of the province, we support this report and welcome the framework. Thank you. [Applause.]