The African National Congress (ANC) in KwaZulu-Natal has welcomed the R140 billion provincial budget announced by MEC for Finance Nomusa Dube-Ncube.
Tabling the budget, Dube-Ncube among other things announced the re-building of over 180 schools damaged by storms last year.
She also announced the building of houses in areas such as eThekwini, KwaDukuza and Newcastle. Meanwhile, the provincial education and health departments received R57 billion and R49 billion respectively.
ANC KZN provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli says they are happy with the budget.
“There was attention to three important tasks that must be achieved. One was to rebuild our economy and the second one was that we needed to address the issue of infrastructure, roads, houses and all that. There is no doubt that the budget has actually responded to these demands. It also addressed the triple three challenges,” says Ntuli.
Meanwhile, the IFP has raised concern that the budget allocation for both KZN Transport and Human Settlements is far too low.
IFP President Velenkosini Hlabisa says the current amounts would not be sufficient to deal with the backlogs.
“It is regrettable that transport did not get any big share, we know in terms of floods the backlog date back to 2008, this means roads potholes will remain the same. Again Human Settlement did not get a bigger share which means millions of South Africans in KZN who are without descent houses and those in shacks will remain living in shacks,” says Hlabisa.
