Dear Cape Town
I will be meeting with the Western Cape Minister of Finance, David Maynier, requesting that the province rejects the proposed Special Appropriations Bill [B10-2019], also known as the Eskom Bill, which seeks to cut money to the provinces and hollow out provincial budgets to bail out the ailing national power producer.
I will also be writing to the Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Finance at the National Assembly, Mr Yunus Ismail Carrim, requesting that select public hearings be held in the provinces pending the Bill’s consideration.
South Africa’s provincial budgets have already been cut by R17 billion collectively to bail out Eskom in the 2019/20 financial year as part of the adopted Appropriations Bill, amounting to a collective R59 billion over the next three financial years.
The new Eskom Bill proposes a further R59 billion, amounting to an additional:
R26 billion in the 2019/20 financial year; and
R33 billion in the 2020/21 financial year.
Along with Eskom’s R17 billion debt in the previous year, this equates to approximately R130 billion being cut from provincial budgets over the next three years.
National Treasury is essentially hollowing out the provinces to ensure that Eskom does not default.
Deidré Baartman, MPP says: “Considering that the Western Cape is subjected to severe budget cuts of billions of rand each year, this essentially means that taxpayer’s money meant for service delivery and governance in our province is now being sacrificed to keep Eskom afloat. This is reckless and disastrous management of the public purse.”
MPP Baartman adds: “The provinces have no say in this matter and yet we are expected to sustain increased service delivery roll out with far less money. This will inevitably lead to job shedding in the public sector which will be catastrophic for the Western Cape and South Africa at large.”
MPP Baartman concludes: “It must be noted that the Western Cape already has the lowest poverty rate in the country with the second fastest growing population, according to a recent report by the Financial and Fiscal Commission. The Western Cape also has the lowest expanded unemployment rate in the country according to the recent Quarterly Labour Force Survey by StatsSA. The Western Cape already outperforms every other province in the country under severe budget cuts by National Treasury, but we cannot be expected to compensate financially for national government’s shortfalls in its management of our state-owned enterprises”.
I will lobby for public hearings to be held in our province over the Special Appropriations Bill to ensure that financial bail outs for Eskom do not affect the jobs and service delivery upon which millions of our residents rely.
Regards
Deidré Baartman, MPP
DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Finance, Economic Opportunities, and Tourism
