Madam Deputy Speaker, as members know, the Division of Revenue Amendment Bill in essence provides for the division of revenue between the three spheres of government. An amount of R808 billion is made available for division in the 2011-12 Budget. National departments are allocated 47%; provinces 44,3% and municipalities 8,7% of this amount.
Special emphasis was placed on the provision of funds for job creation by all three spheres of government in both the state of the nation address and the Budget Speech. By creating jobs, citizens are able to move out of the cycle of poverty, which in turn could assist in reducing the huge provision required for social grants. The emphasis on job creation by government as one of its main priorities is therefore supported, but the way in which government wants to achieve this objective is questionable.
The first problem is the R73 billion provided for the Expanded Public Works Programme over the next three years. There is nothing wrong with the principle of providing these funds. The inability of government, however, to actually spend the money is of major concern.
At the end of the third quarter of 2010, the Department of Public Works had spent only 49,75% of the R1,4 billion Budget allocated to it for this purpose. When asked for reasons for the underexpenditure, the department explained that the EPWP; are operated as incentive schemes for municipalities to create jobs. Municipalities have to apply to the department for approval of an EPW Programme; if approved, they may continue with the programme, but use their own money in the first instance. Once the programme has been completed, they can reclaim the money from the department.
It follows therefore that only those municipalities with the necessary human capacity and funds can gainfully make use of this system. Municipalities in rural areas, in particular, battle because most of them are cash-strapped and lack human capacity. The EPWP therefore does not help much in the rural areas or poor municipalities, and it is particularly in rural areas where jobs are more necessary than anywhere else. The result is that a majority of poor municipalities create very few jobs through the EPWP system. The system has to be changed to become effective.
Government has proclaimed its aim to create an additional five million jobs by 2020. Currently a gross domestic product, GDP, growth rate of just over 3% this year, escalating to just over 4% in 2013 is projected. At these growth rates, the five million jobs will remain a pipedream. Only with annual growth rates in the order of 7% per annum is the target likely to be attained. The goal of five million jobs by 2020 seems to ignore the major structural changes required in our economy to reach the necessary growth rates and further disregards the possibility of another global recession in the next nine years. Five million jobs by 2020 sounds like a great election promise, just like the ANC has been promising "jobs, jobs, jobs" since 1994, without making any progress.
Creating jobs requires outstanding organisational skills and control over expenditure. One can therefore only laugh or maybe cry about the R1,2 billion made available to the National Youth Development Agency for job creation. They themselves have proved to be totally disorganised. They have a complete lack of skills as far as control of expenditure is concerned and what aggravates the situation is that they do not report to any parliamentary committee which could exercise parliamentary oversight. This organisation wasted R100 million of taxpayers' money on a fruitless congress, or shall we call it a party, yet government seems so scared of losing the youth vote that they reward the National Youth Development Agency with a further R1,2 billion of taxpayers' money for wastage. [Interjections.] A disgrace indeed! A serious rethink on some of government's job creation programmes is called for. [Applause.]