Civil servants demonstrating during public sector strike.
KwaZulu-Natal is facing a budget deficit of more than R4-billion, with provincial authorities struggling to find funds to meet the added costs of the central government's pay deal for public sector workers.
This was the warning issued by outgoing Democratic Alliance (DA) state leader Francois Rodgers at a press conference on Friday where he and Ummugeni Local Government Leader Chris Pappas outlined the state of affairs in the state and the party's election proposals. Ta.
This comes ahead of KwaZulu-Natal Premier Nomsa Dube-Ncube's official state of the state address next week. Mr. Pappas is a candidate for premier of the state.
“If you look at the situation, we will end up with a budgeted deficit of R9 billion at the end of the budget. This deficit is due to central government being unable to fund negotiated wage agreements and only a small portion of it being funded. “It's happening because we haven't provided. Having provided R3.7 billion means our province is still facing a deficit of more than R4 billion,” Mr Rogers said. .
A statement released by the Treasury at the time said the majority of trade unions representing public sector workers agreed to a two-year pay deal that included a 7.5% increase in 2023-24 and an inflation-linked increase in 2024-25. agreed. Last year's reconciliation situation.
The cost of the contract is estimated at R37.4 billion in 2023-2024, with carry-through effects to be applied in the next financial year.
Nationally, the public sector wage bill will cost R421 billion, or 34.9% of the total social wage bill of R1,206 billion allocated in the 2024-24 budget, a Treasury spokesperson announced on Friday. . This will primarily be used to pay the salaries of educators and healthcare workers.
But Mr Rogers said KwaZulu-Natal's health and education departments also accounted for the lion's share of the province's wage bill, receiving only 78 per cent of their negotiated wages.
“Other sectors received nothing and had to be fully funded. Agriculture suffered R80 million in damage, [department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs] “About R34.5 million was affected,” he said.
“Health lost R2.89 billion due to wage agreements, human settlements, unpaid public services, R26.4 million not earned and the Department of Social Development. [DSD] “We lost R97.2 million,” he said.
“And now our organization, a nonprofit organization under DSD, has been told there will be no additional funding due to budget cuts. We speak about the inequities that still exist in our state. There's no need. And those organizations played an important role in dealing with those individuals. So overall, we're not in a very good position.”
Mr Rogers said the province's emergency reserves had fallen from R500-million to just R158-million over the past few years. Service delivery collapsed in the province and in the eThekwini metro, which suffers from water outages.
“We're teetering from one crisis to the next,” Rogers said.
He said unemployment in KwaZulu-Natal had grown to 43.4% and “remains the country's murder and rape capital”, while the Department of Health faced R31-billion in medico-legal claims. The Ministry of Education said it is providing internet connectivity and laptops. , data projectors and other technology have been provided to just 110 schools.
Mr Pappas said the DA would tackle crime and security, the controversial deployment policy, burden relief and the water crisis, as well as work with the private sector to create jobs, improve health services and education, and respect the public. He said his focus is on recovery. Zulu monarchy.
He said staff performance management and lifestyle and skills audits were essential to improving service delivery, noting that staff had resigned from the municipality after being involved in lifestyle audits.
“We need to measure service delivery. We need to stop measuring the number of ribbons we cut. We have to have a program that supports our students,” Pappas said.
