Africa-Press – South-Africa. The Gauteng government has yet to deliver on crucial service delivery promises it made after taking office in 2019 and is unlikely provide any solutions to the endless challenges facing residents.
This was the view of the DA’s Gauteng leader, Solly Msimanga, in giving the DA’s “real state of the province address” on Thursday.
Msimanga’s speech came ahead of Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s State Of the Province Address (SOPA) address on Monday.
Lesufi took over as premier from David Makhura in 2022.
Msimanga said that, despite this being Lesufi’s first SOPA, he was responsible for the promises made by the ANC-led government when it took office in 2019.
He said the Gauteng government had failed on several service delivery promises.
The health department needed to pay service providers on time, and several hospitals still needed to be renovated, the DA leader said.
Msimanga said the provincial cooperative governance and traditional affairs department had yet to resolve the issues facing the Emfuleni local municipality, which had struggled to pay its staff for several months.
Emfuleni is listed as one of the worst-run municipalities in the country and is hugely indebted to Eskom and Rand Water.
The human settlements department failed because it had yet to meet any of its set targets, particularly in housing provision, Msimanga said.
“Several projects across the province are incomplete, and there is a continued regularity of underspending, with more than 350 blocked or delayed and incomplete housing projects in Gauteng waiting for completion,” Msimanga said.
He said the provincial government needed to keep a check on irregular expenditure, which was at R9.73 billion, while fruitless and wasteful expenditure was R378 million.
Msimanga said the only way these solutions could be solved was if officials, who did not perform, were dealt with through consequence management.
The state of the province’s roads was also a concern, he said.
He linked the state of the roads to the need for more clarity on e-tolls after an announcement was made in 2022 that it would be scrapped.
He said the silence around how the province would pay for the e-toll debt meant it was likely to be shouldered by residents.
Msimanga said if the electorate gave the DA a chance, it would deal with the corruption plaguing the province.
The party would also find a solution to load shedding by using independent power producers, which is a similar to the DA in the Western Cape, Msimanga said.
Several areas in Gauteng suffered from water shortages, which were at times compounded by load shedding.
Msimanga said the DA would allow water pump supply areas to be excluded from load shedding.
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