Chairperson of the NCOP, hon President of the Republic of South Africa, respected members of the House, distinguished guests, comrades and friends, dumelang [I greet you].
I stand before you coming from a province that is fully committed to the spirit and letter of our Constitution, as opposed to selectively embracing our Constitution. [Interjections.] I stand before you, coming from a province that has a leadership of capable men and women who constitute its executive council. The leadership capacity of both men and women has been created and demonstrated by the ruling party and has affirmed that both men and women have the ability to lead and govern. [Applause.]
I stand before you, leading the delegation of the Gauteng province. I have not come here to represent the interests of the ANC, because I believe that there are capable members of the ANC in the National Assembly. [Interjections.] Here today, we have different representatives representing provincial interests. I call upon all my colleagues, including the colleague who has just left this House, to appreciate the need for taking our responsibilities quite seriously.
We are here to represent the interests of the people of our provinces and, I dare say, it is quite scandalous that even when you have your own deployees in the NCOP and the NA, you will want to steal the thunder and be the representative of the party. Remember your responsibility.
On behalf of the people of Gauteng, we would like to extend our gratitude for being provided with the opportunity to address this House. We gather here today only a few days after the hon Minister of Finance tabled the 2010 MTEF. We, too, like many in the country and abroad, take our hats off to the Minister and applaud him for delivering a pragmatic Budget under very trying conditions.
We believe that the belt-tightening measures announced by the Minister will only serve to drive us, as humble servants of the people, to be more prudent, more efficient and more accountable with the public purse. As they say, every dark cloud has a silver lining. We believe that the global economic recession has necessitated that we become a more effective government and do more with the little that we have.
As the Gauteng Provincial Government, we have made it abundantly clear that we will take to heart the lessons of efficiency, accountability and good governance that the recession has taught us.
We will inculcate those lessons into the culture and way of life of our public servants, as well as ours, the elected representatives. In that light, we have committed ourselves to ensuring that, throughout the Gauteng Provincial Government, our efforts are geared to the realisation of our strategic priorities as contained in the ANC's election manifesto which we have adopted as the government's provincial programme.
A few weeks ago, we joined hands with the German automotive manufacturer BMW in Johannesburg when it announced an investment of more than R2 billion in its Rosslyn production plant. The move, as we said then, is a massive vote of confidence by the automotive manufacturer in our province, especially as it takes place during such tough economic times and even before the Automotive Production and Development Programme is finalised.
The investment fits like a glove our goal of creating decent work for our people. What is clear is that the quality of work for the almost 40 000 or so BMW South Africa workers will certainly improve because of the skilling and reskilling interventions that BMW, working together with the department of economic development in Gauteng, will introduce.
We are quite aware that this significant investment would not have taken place if all three spheres of government did not pull together in one direction. And again, because we are a province that embraces the Constitution in its entirety, we did not see this as interference by the central government; instead we saw this as another way of complementing the capacity and potential that provincial government has. Through this investment, we believe that we are all harnessing the economic development of the City of Tshwane.
Therefore, we are not the ones who need to be told or taught about what our Constitution strives to do. We sacrificed; we died; we went to jail; and others never returned from exile precisely because of the aspirations we held. Those aspirations are now enshrined in our Constitution. No one knows that better than those of us who are in the ranks of the ANC. [Applause.]
We believe that this investment embodies what the hon Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa, Comrade Kgalema Motlanthe, meant when he said, and I quote:
The achievement of the Government Programme of Action goals assumes exactly that our efforts are well co-ordinated across the three spheres of government, consciously driven by common imperatives.
We are also exploring ways in which the provincial government, in conjunction with the National Youth Development Agency and municipalities, can empower our youth with employable skills. That is why, in our state of the province address earlier this year, we called for a closer inspection of how our Expanded Public Works Programme, EPWP, is rolled out. We believe that if young mothers, those who are recipients of child support grants or other government social assistance were given opportunities to get employable skills, they would be in a position to break the sad and vicious cycle of dependency on the government much sooner. In the light of that, more funds will be freed up for the government to embark on other service delivery programmes.
In our endeavour to provide better health care for all in the province, numerous challenges were identified. We had to hit the ground running in developing a turnaround strategy to deal with inefficiencies and shortages in our local clinics and hospitals, including the iconic Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. We are glad to say that we have since put measures in place to ensure that tragedies such as the lack of medicines when people visit our hospitals do not ever take place again in Gauteng.
Through the Gauteng department of health's Operation Kuyasheshwa-la we have managed to stabilise the situation and bolster measures to make sure that suppliers are paid timeously. We have also put in place a team to assist hospitals to deal with the crisis.
Our efforts to build a cohesive and sustainable community have recently been recognised by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN- Habitat. This, after the Gauteng department of local government and housing received the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour in recognition of its flagship programme of urban revitalisation, the Alexandra Renewal Project. The Alexandra Renewal Project was born in 2001 as an urban regeneration project that aimed to bring social, economic, physical and institutional developments to the historic township.
The UN-Habitat said that many commendable candidates were considered for the award. It felt, however, that the Alexandra Renewal Project should receive the award this year for its outstanding efforts in upgrading the housing, social and physical infrastructure of the Alexandra neighbourhood, as well as improving the living conditions for its residents. Indeed, Alexandra shall never be the same again! [Applause.]
The latest Auditor-General's report identified the many challenges that Gauteng departments and entities face in accounting for public funds used. We have already stated our unhappiness that some officials have allegedly ignored the Public Finance Management Act regulations. And recently ... [Interjections.]