Thank you.
The Expanded Public Works Programme, EPWP, is also assisting municipalities to deal with waste management backlogs. The Food for Waste programme is an innovative programme where communities collect their own waste and receive compensation in the form of food parcels. This is a food security programme and 10 municipalities are currently participating. Nineteen municipalities will be brought on board in this financial year to accelerate our performance in this programme.
As a lead department in the implementation of this programme, Public Works will continue to use the programme in the war against poverty. I want to invite you to be in a real war against poverty and unemployment, and not just leave it at talking about it. You will have people who will always say that EPWP opportunities are actually not jobs, but those are people who have choices. If you introduce the EPWP to the poorest people, it will make a difference.
Local government, in particular, requires a massive injection of relevant resources to fast-track the delivery of services. As a result, the department has decided to redeploy certain of our skilled human resources from the EPWP to local government in order to assist with capacity in the implementation, evaluation and monitoring of the EPWP programmes and their principals at that level of governance.
Since 2006, in aid of competitive service delivery, our rates and services budgets have been devolved to the next sphere of government to enable faster transfer of payments to the municipalities. In this current year, an amount of R1,8 billion has been allocated for Property Rates Grants. This amount has decreased by 3% from the 2010-11 allocation. Performance on this grant has improved notably in the past financial year, showing improved spending by provinces, of 92%. The department has developed a mechanism to ensure that this is accelerated in the current financial year and I will be working closely with all the stakeholders to meet our targets.
I want to emphasise the point that we need to move away from working in silos. For instance, in regard to my work in this province with the MEC for Public Works, we do not want to see any particular political party, but to see people who are committed to dealing with the national problems, and attacking those problems. We need to say that we have problems in our country. If we are South Africans who love South Africa, when there are problems in the Free State or the Western Cape regarding toilets, that should not be something to laugh at. We should rather look at ourselves as a department and work out who can contribute what in order to make sure that we solve the problems of our country. That is because, when people look at South Africa, they don't look at me or the MEC. They look at all of us and ask: What kind of a South Africa is this? [Applause.]
I will be doing that. I will work within my mandate of Public Works and I will also go into the mandates of other Ministers, because they have agreed to work with me. Therefore, you are going to see me in Human Settlements and in Education, because I serve one country and one South Africa. [Applause.]
I am not going to look at the unemployed youth of the Western Cape and say they belong to the DA province. The Western Cape belongs to South Africa. [Applause.] To me, the children in the Western Cape are South African children, and if I have to use my portfolio to assist them, I will do so. [Applause.]
Central to implementing the mandate of the department of Public Works is the need to practise effective co-operative governance and resource management. There are areas that need to be improved by Public Works. There are still problems in Public Works. But we have decided to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty, because it is only through doing that that we can correct what is wrong. [Applause.] We are going to deal with the work in this department as if we have only a one-year term of office. We are not going to have the pleasure of relaxing and only getting things done by 2014. We can reverse the backlog of schools in the Eastern Cape, whether there are 300 or 800 - we have the capacity.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have the capacity. We may not have had it on 1 November, but I tell you now that I have called on all South Africans - be they artisans or civil engineers - who want to contribute to the development of this country to come forward. I never mentioned the party they belonged to, but I said that if they were South Africans and wanted to contribute, they should come forward. I now have 9 000 CVs! Therefore, I will never say to anybody in South Africa - you are going to get your chance, sir - that we don't have the capacity; we now have the capacity!
I have men and women who are already spending sleepless nights because of this woman! These are all my duties. [Applause.] They say that when they get into a meeting, they check their notebooks - they take their notebooks because they don't know what new instructions they are going to get. We are driven by what the people want.
This morning we went to the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital! We did not know that we were going to make the number of commitments that we did. If the hospital's CEO tells you about the problems they are experiencing and you greet her and request a good breakfast and leave, she will think that you are crazy. You have to commit to things at the time and get to all the problems they have. [Applause.]
All the problems that they have in the hospital ended this morning during our breakfast with your MEC from the Western Cape. That is testimony to the excellent commitment he has made and it just goes to show that there are some people who go beyond party politics.
Furthermore, the MEC for Public Works in the Western Cape knows very well that the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital belongs to the national Department of Public Works, but he has paid over R200 million in maintenance even though it is a national Public Works project because he sees it as a project of the country. So, our Chief Financial Officers, CFOs, must come together and transfer the money, and not waste it. [Applause.]
So, Public Works can be used as a department to sweep away the past that we are all hanging onto. We did not choose to be where we are; we have found ourselves there because people made the wrong decisions. However, we are here as a new collective leadership to make the right directions. If it means that I should work with the IFP or the DA, I am ready to do that. I am doing a lot of good work already in this province of the DA, and I think I will do that everywhere. [Applause.]
We have launched another partnership in the Northern Cape. We have started with 100 learners and we are very happy that we are training them at the Pelindaba Technical Training Centre outside Tshwane. We don't want to train the young people only. What do we as Public Works do with them after we trained them, after their graduation? Public Works will make sure that they enter the job market! That's a commitment we are making to them, and they should be very happy about this. [Applause.]
We are going to open workshops, ladies and gentlemen. There were a lot of problems with workshops and the closing down of workshops. That's all nonsense. You must have a workshop closer to home, because by the time they come and fix the pipes a lot of water had been wasted. If you have workshops around villages and townships, you just pick up the phone and you have your department at your disposal. It is then no longer your problem; it becomes Public Works' problem. We promise you that whatever the problem is will be dealt within the hour and, for us to be able to do that, we need to deploy as many young people as possible to these workshops.
This is one of the things that I'll be doing. I don't want to sit down. I usually say to my officials that one day we will sleep, and it will be such a perfect sleep - nobody will ever disturb us. Why do you want to sleep now? Now we must work so that when that time comes, Deputy Minister Fransman, we are able to say that were resting peacefully. I can't rest peacefully when there is still so much prevailing poverty.
We make decisions, we trust officials and officials have another agenda. It is we the politicians who have a contract with the people, hon members. Our officials don't have that contract. Some of them actually say, "She will make a lot of noise, but she will come and go like the others came and went." We are staying here. I want to say to you that I am blessed with deputy directors-general, DDGs, and managers who think like I do.
It was very easy when I came because I fly. I don't want to hear lots and lots of debates in boardrooms, because my predecessors have done that. Why should I be wasting time like that? I don't have the luxury of time. I can't sleep well when children in the Eastern Cape are studying in mud schools or children in Mpumalanga study under trees. I make sure that I make a difference.
I really want to make sure that the President will be proud one day to say that he put a woman in charge in a certain department and that that woman managed to change the face of South Africa's Public Works. It's that machinery that we need to change the face of South Africa. You can do it very quickly. We can make sure.
I went to Baragwanath Hospital this weekend. My portfolio is that of Public Works. Wherever I walk around I see that we can fix this and we can do that, etc. I immediately said to the Minister of Health that we should work together. I am very happy that President Zuma said he didn't want a Minister of Public Works who walked around wearing "oogklappe" [blinkers], as they say in Afrikaans, who just looked one way. Even if you don't know the answer, you can find it out from Social Development. You don't go there because you want to boast and say that you are the Minister. We don't operate like that.
Wherever there are problem in South Africa ... [Interjections.] You're going to have an opportunity to talk about that.
I have spoken about skills development and I've shown you that we are serious about skills development. I often hear, "Minister, we can't find skilled people. They are not there; they are somewhere else." I took a Protea T-shirt and went on TV for two weeks. I got 9 000 of them. I'm told that they are still sending in their curricula vitae, CVs. I'm very grateful to have them and to make sure that we deal with this myth that we cannot find skilled people. We have them. We are also going to make sure that we continue skilling people. I'm very angry at times that our officials don't show us where we need to make improvements.
We have with us here an old man who has worked for Public Works for 36 years. His job has been to open and close the gate. I don't know whether at this late hour I can change his life. I said to him, "You have opened and closed this gate for many officials who took serious decisions, and I am one of them. I want to you to be my partner at my debate." U kayi ntate Maphuta? [Where is Mr Maphuta?] Oh! [Applause.] He decided to serve us with pride and he will make sure that we give back, because he has given us the best in 36 years. I have three minutes left.
Regarding the Expanded Public Works Programme, EPWP, for as long as I'm in Public Works we will never have underspending. It's an insult to our people. We should rather run short of finances, but we should not underspend.
I'm told that this year more than 40% of the money has not yet been used. I am telling you that with all the programmes that we have now, in the next two months we should be running short of money. We should go back to the fiscus and say "Please, you said we must create jobs." We must be stopped by this country when they say that we have created too many jobs. As the person who is in the driver's seat, I've got the energy. You know that. I've got the energy and I am the driver, and I'm sure this is going to happen. I would like to thank you now as I finish.
We are also going to capacitate municipalities because they don't have the capacity to spend. So, we need to assist them. Assisting them is not criticising them. We are going to pick experts from the national sphere to make sure that they do their work correctly.
As I conclude, I thank the House for indulging me in my maiden budget speech. I am reminded of an old West African proverb that says, "He who walks alone may go fast, but he who walks with others goes further." I need to walk with people. May the House allow me to thank those who have walked with me. It has been very rough. It has not been easy. I call them at any time of the night. I send e-mails at 2 am, because when I have an idea I just rush to my computer and say, "Please attend to this. Do that quickly." They know very well that if it is the Minister, they have to take their pyjamas - PJs, as they are called by my grandchildren. They say they will stand there and make sure that they do what their Minister wants them to do.
They are not doing it for me, but for our fellow South Africans. Our people have suffered for a long time and we must make sure that we treat this budget as if it is the only budget we shall ever be given. We must make sure that every cent which is voted to us is going to be well-spent for the people of South Africa.
I thank the President of the Republic of South Africa for his vision - for making sure that those people in the "small corners" of South Africa that have been forgotten are remembered. I am using Public Works to go to those corners, even though it's not easy for me to find out where the "little girl" stays.
I would like to thank all the colleagues who have helped me, and also express appreciation for the support of the Deputy Minister. I also wish her a speedy recovery. I think that when I close the debate I'll be able to thank the other people. Thank you so much, Chairperson, for giving me an audience and making sure that my maiden speech is well accepted. [Applause.]