The City of Cape Town says it will have to manage a budget cut of over half a billion rand over the next three years, extremely carefully. While all municipalities have suffered major financial budget cuts, the city says the proportion allocated to it doesn’t speak to its growing population.
The equitable share allocation to the city will be R540 million less over the next three years. This share is given to cities and provinces based on, among others, population, poverty and unemployment.
Its purpose is to benefit, among others, the poor and infrastructure development. But the city says the current equitable share is based on outdated census statistics and doesn’t speak to its current population figures.
“We are still working on a budget allocation from 2011 census. The city has grown by a million people since then, so our actual allocation should jump enormously. Where the city is growing at 3% a year, with about 150 000 people a year, it really must reflect that in our allocation. Otherwise, we are delivering services to more and more people with the same pie which means that everyone has to make do with less and that is not sustainable,” says Geordin Hill-Lewis, Cape Town Mayor.
Hill-Lewis says Treasury did indicate it will adjust its budget according to the new census. He says while the city will hold national government to it, he is concerned about possible job opportunities lost, especially in the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP).
“The one that I am actually most concerned about is the EPWP because that supports thousands of people in Cape Town. We have 80 000 EPWP workers, and they actually do a lot of good work. They pick up litter in our communities, they help with construction projects, sometimes their teams help to clean our rivers, those are all EPWP staff members. So, we going to have to look at that impact on that service delivery and the staff. As I referred to the equitable share portion, goes directly into services. We can’t really cut services in informal settlements and poor communities,”
Rapid School Build program
The Western Cape Education Department has welcomed an additional provisional allocation of more than R2.5 billion by National Treasury to its Rapid School Build program.
This follows an application through the national Budget Facility for Infrastructure. It says the funding will bring new schools that will expand the number of places available in the province, especially in areas that have larger class sizes and a high demand for placement.
The department says the funding will assist in stabilizing its plans for new schools over the medium term.
City of Cape Town unhappy with budget allocation: Geordin Hill-Lewis:
