Deputy Chairperson, it's an honour for me to be in this House today. First of all, I recognise the Minister and all the hon members.
At the outset I want to say that the Western Cape supports this Division of Revenue Bill. There are a couple of highlighted areas that I would like to cover in the time allocated to me. I must just say at the outset that of course we welcome the R36 billion that we are going to spend this year in the province, or the R100 billion over the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, cycle, of which 95% comes to our province via this division of revenue.
The areas that I want to highlight follow on something the chair said when he started this debate, as well as my colleague from Gauteng. It is something that really affects Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, namely the in-migration of people coming to look for opportunities in our province: opportunities for jobs, opportunities around health care and opportunities around education.
I must point out that we welcome citizens from other provinces who wish come to the Western Cape in order to receive better quality health care and education. We welcome them with open arms, because we believe that we need to make sure that we offer all South Africans the service they deserve. Obviously, this puts major pressure on our allocation, specifically when head-per-head rand allocation is happening in other provinces but we are expected to deliver that service. Obviously we are going to have a corrective measure happening in this country shortly with the new census, which will help us correct some of those numbers. I think the migration and the trends are happening ahead of that curve and obviously that does put pressure on how we are able to deliver effective services.
I also want to concur with the Minister when he stated in his Budget Speech that the above-inflation - rate salaries that are negotiated really put huge, huge pressure on us as provinces, because every single time a salary negotiation happens above budget and we do not get the full compensation for that above-average negotiation, those extra funds have to come out of our service delivery pockets. That really makes a big difference. In our province, with 76 000 staff members, just on R20 billion of our R36 billion goes to salaries and wages. So, one can understand that with such a big proportion of our budget going into that sector, it does make a difference if you miss it by one or two per cent.
I would also like to say, specifically around the provincial equitable share review, that I really welcome that review. I also specifically welcome the increase for education and health. Although it's not very significant, there is an increase from 9,23% to 9,37% over the 2011 MTEF. Obviously, there is an increase and we do welcome it. We do think we should see some of those numbers rising after the census.
The Western Cape received an increase of 5,37% in the conditional grants and I think perhaps that could also be increased a little bit. We are moving from R8,156 billion in 2011-12 conditional grants to R8,747 billion in 2012-13 and R9,580 billion in 2013-14.
I want to talk about infrastructure spending. Contrary to the Chair's opening gambit in this debate, stating that all the money in this province is spent on rich communities - I think that's what he said - quite frankly, when it comes to infrastructure spending, we are busy building two hospitals at the moment. If you're not aware of where they are, they are in Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha - very wealthy suburbs of our city! [Applause.]
What we are also doing is that we are building ... [Interjections.]