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“Gauteng’s Quality Of Life And Quality Of Governance Is Consistently Improving”: Fifth Political Report To The Provincial Legislature By Premier David Makhura.

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“Gauteng’s Quality Of Life And Quality Of Governance Is Consistently Improving”: Fifth Political Report To The Provincial Legislature By Premier David Makhura.

Gauteng Premier David Makhura
Gauteng Premier David Makhura

3rd December 2018

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Madame Speaker, Honourable Ntombi Mekgwe;

Deputy Speaker, Honourable Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko;

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Chief Whip, Honourable Sochayile Khanyile;

Members of the Executive Council;

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Honourable Members of this august House;

Comrades and Compatriots;

Fellow South Africans;

The People of Gauteng:

It is, once more, a distinct honour and privilege to present the Fifth Political Report of the ANC-led Fifth Provincial Administration to the Provincial Legislature and the people of Gauteng.

Given the fact that this is the last Political Report of the term of office of this Legislature, it provides a comprehensive overview of the work done during the entire term.

This Political Report seeks to answer two central questions: 1) What change has taken place in Gauteng between 1994 and 2018? What are the specific milestones of the fifth administration?

Madame Speaker, to answer these questions truthfully, dispassionately and objectively, we need an evidence-based approach that is grounded in rigorous and independent reports by credible institutions.

Thomas Piketty, the celebrated French economist, who authored the seminal book “Capital in the Twenty First Century” offers a simple but profound counsel:

“an intellectual and political debate without data is like the dialogue of the deaf: it is based on an abundance of prejudice and a paucity of facts. Given this dialogue of the deaf, in which each camp justifies its own intellectual laziness by pointing to the intellectual laziness of the other, there is a role for research that is at least systematic and methodical if not fully scientific…by patiently searching for facts and patterns and calmly analysing the economic, social and political mechanisms that might explain them; it can inform democratic debate and focus attention on the right questions. It can also help to redefine the terms of the debate, unmask certain preconceived or fraudulent notions, and subject all positions to constant critical scrutiny.”

Madame Speaker, without verifiable data and irrefutable evidence corroborated by independent institutions, any assessment of government performance can end up being trapped in a furious and fruitless trading of ideological insults. This is not the route we choose.

As I have stated before, we subscribe to a different politics: we choose reason over insults; evidence over dogma; hope over despair; persuasion over bullying; engagement over intimidation. This is the path we choose as we work to build Gauteng into a province where everybody’s best dream can become a reality.

What change has taken place in Gauteng between 1994 and 2018?

Gauteng has experienced dramatic demographic change and exponential growth in the size of the population, infrastructure and economy.

Our province’s population has almost doubled - from 7.8 million in 1996 to 14.7 million in 2018. One in every four people who live in South Africa, lives in Gauteng.

The provincial economy is more than four times what it was – from a GDP of R290 billion in 1996 to R1.5 trillion in 2018. Our provincial economy is the seventh largest economy in our continent.

The number of people employed in the Gauteng economy has also doubled – from 2.6 million in 1996 to 5.1 million in 2018. Gauteng has created 420 000 net new jobs since 2014.

The scale of investment in social and economic infrastructure is four times what it was in 1994. According to the 2017/18 Gauteng City Region Observatory Quality of Life Survey V, access to basic services is much higher and more inclusive than it was in 1994 – formal dwelling is at 81%; piped water is at 91%; electricity is at 92%; sanitation is at 91% and refuse removal is at 83%. These basic services were ranging between 50% and 65% in 1994.

The size of the public education system has also doubled – from 1.2 million learners in 1994 to 2.4 million learners today. In the past four years, we increased access to Early Childhood Development more than four times from 83 000 children to 483 000 children. We have also invested significant resources in expanding access education by learners with special needs.

Since 1994, we have built 335 new schools, refurbished more than 10 000 classrooms, converted 1800 classrooms into ICT-enabled classrooms, built 1500 computer labs and 83 new libraries in various communities across the province.  

The school performance and educational outcomes of learners from township schools has improved tremendously. The Throughput rate has improved from 42% in 2006 to 70% in 2017. Matric results have improved from 61% to 85% in 2017 and Gauteng is consistently among the top 3 best performing provinces on Grade 6, 8 and 12 examinations and international assessments.

We provide 1.1 million learners with meals on a daily basis. Over the past four years, we have also provided 1.2 million girl learners with dignity packs and 500 000 learners from poor households with school uniforms.

The introduction of ICT-enabled classrooms and the partnership with the private sector on the rollout of schools of specialisation is preparing our learners for the skills required by the labour market in the context of the unfolding fourth industrial revolution.

Our public health system services three times the number of people it serviced in 1994 – from 7 million people to 20 million per annum.

Since 1994, we have built seven new hospitals and 41 new community health centres and clinics in the province.

Gauteng residents now live longer as the average life expectancy is 64 years, compared to 54.7 years for women and 52.2 years for men in 2006. The success of anti-retroviral therapy has drastically reduced mother-to-child HIV transmission in our province to 0.68%, which is close to our target of 0%.

Honourable Members, despite the many challenges we still face in health, Gauteng has achieved the highest number (281 out of 372) of Ideal Clinics (75%) in our country – they are clean, open on time, well run, have reduced waiting times and high rates of medicine availability.

However, our hospitals and primary healthcare facilities are under tremendous pressure with regard to finances, personnel and infrastructure, due to in-migration and rapid urbanisation.

Life Esidimeni tragedy is one of the saddest moments in the public health system of our province. It symbolises major lapses in the management, governance and accountability systems of the Gauteng Department of Health. All the recommendations of the Health Ombuds, Prof Malegapuru Makgoba and Arbitrator, Justice Dikgang Moseneke, are being followed up and implemented as part of the turnaround of the Department.

Since 1994, the ANC-led government has built 1.2 million government-subsidised houses in Gauteng, providing more than 3 million people with decent shelter.

The Quality of Life survey shows that home-ownership among the poor is very high due to the impact of our human settlement programme.

However, the housing backlog remains stubbornly high at more than 1 million. The programme to transform hostels into family units and integrate hostel dwellers into new human settlements has not progressed well. 

The introduction of mega human settlement projects aimed at bringing in private sector funding to build new post-apartheid integrated cities and Rapid Land Release will address the demand for housing and land in a comprehensive manner than ever before.

The cumulative developmental impact of all the investments being made in education, health, housing and basic services can been seen in the sustained improvement in the human development index (HDI) and quality of life index (QOLI), both of which are born by research. Gauteng has an above average HDI of 0.71 and sustained improvement of Quality of Life Index from 6.02 in 2011 to 6.30 in 2017/18.

The pro-poor fiscal policies and anti-poverty programmes of the ANC-led national and provincial government have seen poverty declining from 10.5% in 2001 to 4.6% in 2016. There are 1.3 million people who are food insecure who receive food packages from the provincial government due to more acute levels of urban poverty and hunger, especially certain households in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Sedibeng, West Rand and northern areas of Tshwane.

Although inequality declined from 0.75 to 0.70 between 2000 and 2009, the last decade has seen a sharp increase in inequality. Many data shows that the Africans and those classified as Coloured continue to lag behind.

We need new bold measures to address inequality as “one of the most pressing concerns of contemporary economics and politics” (Piketty, 1997).

The equitable redistribution of land and access to education and

skills are some of the more potent instruments which could reverse inequality and inter-generational poverty.

What are the specific milestones of the fifth administration?

The fifth administration adopted the ten-pillar programme for radical Transformation, Modernisation and Re-industrialisation (TMR).

From the onset, we invested a lot of time and energy in working with the private sector and industry leaders to unlock the employment, empowerment and export potential of various sectors of the provincial economy, including the revitalisation of the township economy and tackling youth unemployment.

Over the past four and half years, we have built strategic partnership with the private sector through industry action labs that focused on the automotive industry; mining and mineral beneficiation; aerospace; defence and aviation industry; capital equipment and machinery manufacturers; food and beverages; ICT industry and the Business Process Outsourcing sector.

This work has focused on skills development, infrastructure development, enhancing the ease of doing business, job creation, employment opportunities for young people, empowerment for the previously disadvantaged groups in supply chains of major corporates and promoting export of products and services to other markets, especially in the continent. Out of this partnership with the private sector, the Gauteng economy created 420 000 net new jobs.

We have also supported Gauteng-based companies to access major opportunities in the regional value chains and supply chains within SADC and the broader African continent, as part of promoting intra-Africa trade and Africa’s industrialisation. Our work on sub-national economic diplomacy has been strengthened in major regions and city regions in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Through work done by Professor Ronald Wall (appointed a Chair of Economic Development of Cities and City Regions at Wits University) on the geography of investment, we have come to understand the city regions with whom we are competing for trade and investment and those with whom we are compatible and complimentary. We now have a more targeted and effective strategy to attract desirable FDI into our province and facilitate greater levels of trade between Gauteng-based companies and the rest of the continent and the world.

Since 2014, our province has attracted R66 billion in FDI flows, R10 billion of which was facilitated directly by our One Stop Shop Investment Centre, which has now been renamed and relaunched as InvestSA.

Gauteng province leads the country in promoting intra-Africa trade. By August 2017, more than 169 Gauteng-based businesses had 365 investment projects worth R356 billion across the major regions of our continent. These projects have created and sustained more than 45 000 jobs in our own economy.

Earlier this month, our province co-hosted hosted the Inaugural Africa Investment Forum (AIF) in partnership with the African Development Bank. The AIF has been dubbed the most successful investment platform ever to be hosted in Africa. Its permanent home will be here in Gauteng.

Investors from across the continent and the world at large gathered in Johannesburg and concluded investment transactions worth US$38 billion for infrastructure projects in Africa. The Gautrain, Kopanong Precinct and Waste-to-Energy projects are among South African projects that attracted US$6.8 billion (R92 billion) worth of investment.

As Gauteng province, we are bringing in our full weight in contributing to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s effort to raise US$100 billion in investment into the South African economy over the next five years. The New Dawn is not something that we only embrace, we are also working hard to make it a reality.

Madame Speaker, one of the flagship programme of the TMR is the revitalisation and mainstreaming of the township economy so that townships are transformed into economically sustainable nodes and vibrant centres of cultural and artistic expression.

To give effect to this noble idea, we adopted the township economy revitalisation strategy that is being implemented by our departments and municipalities.

Prior to 2014, the provincial government was only supporting 800 township enterprises through buying goods and services worth R600 million. This has changed drastically over the past four and half years: the provincial government now spends 23% of its budget for goods and services on procurement from 4500 township businesses to the value of R21 billion.

The ANC-led provincial government has also invested in industrial infrastructure as part of the efforts to re-industralise townships. We have refurbished and constructed 30 township industrial parks, 5 township Agri-Parks, 2 Township Automotive Hubs and 7 eKasi Labs across the five corridors. These facilities are serving as township incubation and innovation centres as well as technology, agro-processing and manufacturing hubs that are powering the next generation of township entrepreneurs. 

In order to support township innovators and help to modernise the way business is done in our townships, we have rolled out broadband infrastructure to more than 10 000 township Wi-fi hotspots.

Through the Qondi’sishishini Lakho programme, we have helped formalised 20 000 township businesses and supported them on matters such as submitting tax returns and registering on the government data base.

Access to markets and access to finance remain the two main challenges faced by township businesses.

Recently, we have partnered with the CEO Initiative’s SMME Fund in order to open funding opportunities for township businesses that find it difficult to get funding from banks. It is this gap that informs our intention to establish a provincial state bank.

Some municipalities such as Tshwane and Johannesburg are no longer supporting the township economy revitalisation and re-industrialisation initiatives. It can only be assumed that this is for party political reasons, not rational policy-making.

I will continue to make a call to the Mayors to join the growing movement for township economic development. This is for the good of our economy.

Madame Speaker, one of the major focus areas of the TMR is the deliberate focus on infrastructure development as a catalyst for spatial and economic transformation.

Between 2011 and 2018, the ANC-led provincial government has spent R60 billion on infrastructure development that ranges from industrial parks; upgrading and reconstruction of roads; public transport; schools; libraries; clinics and hospitals; rehabilitation centres; places of safety for victims of gender-based violence; police stations and sports grounds.

The investment in good infrastructure is well appreciated by the residents of the Gauteng City Region. This is born by the fact that quality of infrastructure continues to be one of the areas that gets top rating by citizens, according to the Quality of Life survey. However, aging infrastructure and the pressure of rapid urbanisation are two critical issues that warrant coordinated responses by the entire Gauteng City Region. Water and sanitation infrastructure requires more urgent attention because a crisis of water security and ageing infrastructure is looming. Some municipalities don’t take the warning seriously.

Honourable Members, one of the key issues that remain unresolved is the funding of the debt incurred during the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Plan. The people of Gauteng do not like the e-Tolls system.

It is for this reason that we have now referred this matter to the President for a final determination on alternative options of settling the debt. I am confident that a solution will be found. Once the debt is settled, we will be able to maintain our roads without the e-toll system.

Last week, my attention was drawn to the advertising being done by the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) company, which subliminally suggests that stopping e-tolls will have a negative impact on the future of the economy and people of our province. Nothing is further from the truth. This is an attempt at blackmailing the people of Gauteng. Please try another trick. We will not be blackmailed. The e-tolls have no future here.

There are other ways of building, maintaining and upgrading roads. For instance, the Gauteng government has been able to upgrade and rehabilitate our provincial road network of more than 5000 km that have no e-tolls. We can and will find alternative ways of expanding and maintaining our road network without e-tolls. E-Tolls have no future in Gauteng.

Madame Speaker, we have continued to rollout broadband to more than 1 1181 sites, including schools, hospitals, public service customer care centres and industrial parks. This a modest beginning in a project of modernising both government and the economy of our province, in the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution.

According to Dark Fibre Africa, Gauteng currently has over 10 000 kilometres of fibre. This gives our province decisive advantage in positioning itself as a knowledge-based and innovation-driven economy.

Already, the provincial government is working very closely with all Gauteng-based universities in developing an innovation ecosystem. In Tshwane, our innovation Hub is working with the CSIR and University of Pretoria. In Johannesburg, we are working with Wits University and the University of Johannesburg to build an innovation corridor that will stretch from Braamfontein to Auckland Park. Tshimologong ICT precinct in Braamfontein is already doing great work on the development of skills for the future.

Honourable Members, one of the commitments we made in 2014 was that we will take decisive steps to address youth unemployment and marginalisation. In December 2014, we launched a youth empowerment programme, Tshepo 500 000, to equip young people with demand-led skills that will enable them to access the labour market, while others would begin a life of entrepreneurship.

Over a period of four years, 514 000 young people have benefitted from this youth empowerment programme which is run in partnership with, Harambe Youth Employment Accelerator and private sector employers. The Presidential Youth Employment Service, YES, is now part of this programme. 

The role of Harambe is to serve as a clearing house by preparing young people for jobs that are in demand in specific sectors and match them to specific employers, based on their skills and where they live.

Many employers have gained lots of confidence from the preparatory work done by Harambe. This work ranges from the broad-based mass digital learning system now running in township libraries to much more job-specific and task-specific bridging programmes needed to prepare young people for what they will actually do on the job.

Without this intervention, many talented young people who today have job opportunities and run their own businesses, would have been left out, labour market failure and the weaknesses of the education system. 

Madame Speaker, I have listened carefully to some criticism by those who cannot provide any better alternative to the acute crisis of youth unemployment is not going to distract us from what is currently the only intervention that is producing results. In fact, we accept criticism from those who say the programme is not big and fast enough, given the scale of the youth unemployment - 2 million young people.  We are now upscaling the programme and linking it to the opportunities in the township economy, as Tshepo 1 Million. There is no retreat.

Honourable Members, we are in the midst of “16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children” Campaign. The reality is that we are all not doing enough to address the scourge of gender-based violence whose essence is patriarchy and unequal gender relations.

We need a more comprehensive, multi-dimensional, multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder approach which includes strengthening the criminal justice system to ensure that perpetrators are brought to book; empowering girls and boys to grow up as equals; giving access to education girl children as well as opening economic opportunities to young women and women in general. This is precisely what the provincial government has been doing through the TMR.

One of our key areas of intervention is investing in girl children and young women. To this end, provincial government has provided 1.3 million dignity packs to girl learners from poor households, over the past four years, to support their uninterrupted attendance of school.

The provincial government also ensures the young women are the majority in bursary scheme we provide township who want to access higher education - 57 % of the 18 000 students that have received bursaries from the Gauteng Provincial Government are female.

Young women are also the major beneficiaries of Tshepo 1 Million - 60% of those who have benefitted are young women.

Through the Welfare-to-Work intervention, the provincial government has transitioned 32 000 young mothers out of the social grant system to gainful employment and self-employment.

We continue to use the preferential procurement lever to empower women entrepreneurs in order to catapult them into the mainstream of the economy.

Currently, the provincial government spends 22% buying goods and services from businesses owned by women, which is close to the 30% target we set for 2019.

We are also pleased to report that 7 000 women-owned cooperatives have received financial and non-financial support from agencies of the provincial government. In addition, women are in majority in all our public employment schemes such as the Expanded Public Works Programme and Community Works Programme.

Madame Speaker, all these things we do because we know fully well that the face of poverty is black, female and youth. We also know that violent crimes against women and children have reached crisis point.

The FCS as a specialized police unit, has been doing great work collaboration with the prosecution authorities to ensure successful conviction of perpetrators of gender-based violence. On the other hand, victim empowerment has also been strengthened through the establishment of 257 women safety desks and 73 victim empowerment centres across Gauteng.

Ikhaya Lethemba remains a centre of excellence in assisting victims of gender-based violence to break the cycle of abuse and violence and take charge of their own destiny - more than 3000 survivors of gender-based violence have been assisted by this centre to rebuild their lives and reintegrate into society.

Madame Speaker, the Quality of Life survey says together with unemployment, crime and drugs are now the most serious concerns of all Gauteng residents. Our communities and CBDs are flooded by criminals. Although Community Policing Forums and Community Patrollers are putting a great deal of effort in fighting crime, the truth is that they are not coping.

We have invested a lot of time in the 40 priority police stations where crime should be reduced by half. But we need more and better trained personnel as well as better leadership at provincial, cluster and station level.

To this effect, we recently met with the Minister of Police and National Commissioner to call for national intervention to treat the Gauteng crime situation as an emergency. Crime is totally out of control. We await a comprehensive response and support from Police Headquarters. 

Over the past four and half years, we have also invested time and resources in social cohesion and nation-building programmes such as the Social Cohesion Carnival, Community Games, celebrating National Days and Heritage activities.

Honourable Members, the people of our province love sport. They love arts and culture. They love athletics. They run. They walk. They cycle. They jog. They go to music festivals and dance. I have seen them at the Social Cohesion Carnival; at the stadia watching soccer, rugby or cricket; at marathons, festivals and cycling events. They love events that bring them together across the color line.

Honourable members, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Banyana Banyana who have qualified for the 2019 FIFA World Cup in France. They have restored our national pride – The Girls are the pride of our Nation. Women’s Sport deserve greater levels of support. Women in Sport deserve equal pay like it should be the case everywhere else in society.

As the leaders, let’s promote peace, harmony, equality and mutual respect instead of divisions and discord among our people. Sport, arts and culture unite our people. Heritage will make them understand a deeply shared common humanity. Politics and politicians divide them because we are mean-spirited and small-minded people. We must not thrive in the politics of scare-mongering, hatred and pathological despair.

  

As part of promoting our collective and deeply shared heritage, we are in the process of renaming major roads in our province after respected South Africans:

 

In addition, 79 unsung heroes and heroines have been honoured and we have also established 5 Liberation Heritage Routes in all of Gauteng’s Development Corridors.

Honourable Members, I would like to conclude this Report by turning my attention to the overall governance of our province over the past four and half years.

We introduced several ground-breaking reforms and initiatives as part of the TMR - Ntirhisano Rapid Response System and Community Outreach programme; Integrity Management and Good Governance; Open Tender Process and the drive for clean audits and accountability.

Ntirhisano has changed the way government works. Through the more than 80 community engagements and proactive site visits, we have been able to keep more regular contact with communities.

Ntirhisano has also forced government departments to be community-oriented by ensuring that issues for, public meetings and site visits form part of the annual performance plans of departments and budgets.

What makes me happy is that more than 80% of the issues raised by communities are in the process of being resolved, while progress has been much slower with municipal and national government-related issues.

There is now evidence from the Quality of Life surveys that the performance rating of the provincial government by Gauteng residents has steadily been improving since 2015/16. The 2017/18 survey reveals that satisfaction with government is at its highest level of 45% since 2011, while national government is at 43% and local government is at 39%.

It is my considered view that Ntirhisano has contributed strongly to the improvement in satisfaction with the provincial government. However, it is a serious weakness that we are often unable to go to community as the whole-of-government to go listen to, engage with and resolve community concerns. We must fix this weakness for the sake of the citizens.

Since 2011/12, the National Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation conducts MPAT assessments for national and provincial government departments. The assessments look at areas such as compliance and quality of management in terms of Governance and Accountability; Strategic Management; Human Resource Management and Financial Management.

Over the past three years, Gauteng has significantly improved from being a medium performer with 2.0 scores to being number two with 3.1 scores in 2017/18, after Western Cape. This is an important indicator of the investment we have been making in building sound administration and governance across all departments and agencies.

In the area of clean governance, Gauteng has made huge strides over the past four years. We have increased the number of clean audits from 56% in 2013/14 to 65% in 2017/18, while achieving 100% unqualified audits in two successive years - 2016/17 and 2017/18.

In 2017/18, Gauteng is the only province that achieved 100% unqualified audits while the Western Cape got one qualified audit and a disclaimer.

Of course, there is no doubt that more works needs to be done to hold officials accountable for irregular expenditure that stems largely from not following supply chain procedures.

Over the past four years, we have been increasing the envelope of own-revenue collection to generate a total of R25.5 billion.  In 2017/18, we successfully topped the R6 billion mark on collections.

We have also introduced strong anti-corruption and integrity promotion measures across various departments in order to rid Gauteng of any corrupt elements.

What must be made clear is that those who cross the ethical line will face the consequences. We now have an effective instrument where, through close collaboration with the SIU, all old cases are being attended and new one immediate when they arise. We mean business.

The establishment of the civil society-led Ethics Advisory Council as the Integrity promotion and anti-corruption watchdog is a step in the right direction. The Council has been running workshops with public and private sector leaders, trade unions professional bodies and getting them to sign integrity pledges and this has generated lots of positive drive to ensure clean governance in the public and private sector alike in Gauteng. All surveys shown that corruption is a matter of grave concern to citizens and it must tackled head-on through institutional measures that make it very difficult for acts of corruption without consequences.

                                                                                                                  

The introduction of the Open Tender Process has improved transparency and public scrutiny over the procurement processes. It has also reduced irregular and wasteful expenditure. As we perfect the Open Tender Process, we will continue to move with speed in ensuring that it is enacted into a provincial legislation. This ANC-led administration is very serious about promoting transparency and integrity as anti-dotes to corruption.

The performance of local government is an important area on which the provincial government has oversight responsibility. The Quality of Life Survey confirms that the performance of municipalities creates a mixed picture. Some of our municipalities are getting overwhelmed by the challenges of service delivery, while others are maintaining satisfactory levels of basic services.

On the one hand, there is Midvaal, Ekurhuleni and Lesedi which are the top performing municipalities with higher levels of citizen satisfaction. I commend these Mayors for doing a great job.

On the other hand, Tshwane and Emfuleni have regressed in terms of service delivery the residents are not pleased at all. We need to crack the whip politically and administratively to deal with the underlying sources of poor performance.  

The two districts – West Rand and Sedibeng – have no sustainable revenue base. All these requires systematic support and careful intervention from provincial government. I keenly await the Provincial Treasury forensic investigation into the VBS saga.

All those responsible for the VBS looting and other such cases of plunder hard-earned savings and public funds must face the music. We must draw a line in the sand and say: this far and no further.

The section 139 intervention in Emfuleni local municipality is beginning to yield positive results as the final position of the municipality is showing signs of stabilisation. National and provincial government are working with municipality to restore service delivery and financial stability. The evidence from the Quality of Life Survey confirms the correctness of the intervention by provincial government as Emfuleni residents have a harsh verdict on the municipality’s performance.

We are meeting next week Tuesday with National Ministers and the municipality to assess progress since June. A full progress report will be submitted to the Speaker after the meeting.

I would like this House to know that where there is corruption or collapse of service delivery, I will not set back and watch. We will step in and do what the constitution and law of the republic obliges is to do: intervene.

Finally, let me acknowledge the awards won by various Departments and entities of the Gauteng provincial government at the 2018 Centre for Public Service Innovation Awards and other conventions:

The Office of the Premier became first runner up on the GIS Project.

The Gauteng Treasury came 2nd runner ups for the e-invoicing and also came 3rd runner up for the Business Intelligence Tool on BAS.

Gauteng Treasury also became the 2nd runner up on the use of ICT for service delivery solutions, on the Purchase card Project.

Chris Hani Baragwanath became the overall winners On the Innovative service delivery institutions category.

Chris Hani Baragwanath became 3rd runner up on the multidisciplinary on assistive devices category.

Chris Hani Baragwanath also became the overall CPSI 2018 Award winner-on Cerebral Palsy standing box project.

Gauteng Education became 3rd runner up on the Innovative delivery institutions Category.

The Gauteng Education Online Admissions Application System won the Innovative Enhancements of Internal Systems of Government at the 2018 CPSI Awards.

Social Development has been awarded the best functioning department of the year, at the 2018 National Batho Pele Excellence Awards.

The Gautrain Management Agency won an internationally-acclaimed Gold Quill Award in Canada for its children’s publication explaining the Gautrain rail system and promoting the use of public transport. The GMA is the only South African public entity to have received the Gold Quill Award of Merit. This is a prestigious award that was selected from over 700 entries worldwide.

The International Congress and Convention Association shined a spotlight on the monumental contributions of women to the meetings industry at their 57th Congress in Dubai, with ten women from across the association’s global community personally honoured with an Inspirational ICCA Women award by ICCA President Nina Freysen-Pretorius. Among the ten women that won is our own Ms. Nonnie Kubeka, Gauteng Convention Bureau, South Africa, from the Gauteng Tourism.

I hereby thank all the Members of the Executive Council, the Director General, Ms Phindile Baleni, HODs, Special Advisors for their continuing support and fidelity to the people of Gauteng.

This Report demonstrates, on the basis of independent reports and surveys, that despite all the challenges of migration and rapid urbanisation, the quality of life and quality of governance in Gauteng is on a consistently upward curve.  

Let those who have ears hear and those who have eyes see.

I wish you a peaceful and kind-hearted festive season.

Thank you and God Bless You.

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