Limpopo Premier Stanley Chupu Mathabatha addresses TOPCO media on vision 2030

By: Emmaculate Cindi

Limpopo Premier Stanley Chupu Mathabatha was amongst dignitaries that attended the two day 3^rd Topco media annual vision 2030 summit held at Birchwood, Johannesburg. He was addressing representatives from all key decision makers in both public and private sectors.

During his address, Mathabatha alluded to the National Developmental Plan (NDP) that envisions South Africa where everyone feels free and embraces their full potential not by birth but by their ability to education and hard work.

The summit aims to promote and encourage public private partnership investment opportunities in provincial and local government, reinforce private and public sector support and commitment to the NDP and map way forward for the nation to achieve NDP objectives.

The NDP focuses on eliminating gender inequality building capacity of the state which is made of citizens that contributes their portion of tax as required by the law which is then used by ploughing back to the communities through quality of public services rendered by government. Quality of basis services which amounts to good hospitals and clinics accompanied by well trained personnel in the health profession and administration and other basic needs by the citizens of South Africa.

Back in 2011, Limpopo province had almost collapsed due to lack of good governance when the provincial government had accumulated over R2.7 billion in unauthorised expenditure, and was put under administration by cabinet after hospitals were without medication, schools without textbook and public servants were facing a possibility of not getting their salaries.

“Today we can safely say we are on course, we have regained corporate governance and the confidence of the people of the province to continue governing them” said the Premier

To ensure that the provincial government is working towards vision 2030, Mathabatha insisted that its time municipalities starts working towards back to basic principles of reviving and sustaining their public participation programmes in order to ensure that they have dynamic link with the communities which will ensure that communities own up developmental plans of their municipalities which will assist with understanding budgetary constraints and project delivery timelines.

Mathabatha’s address comes the same day as the Auditor General Kimi Makwetu released audit results of South African municipalities for the 2015/2016 financial year where it was revealed that only 49 of the 263 municipalities across the country obtained a clean audit. Irregular expenditure by municipalities has increased by about 50% which amounts to R16.8 million.

Municipalities are urged to improve their audit outcomes and never to tolerate a disclaimer audit opinion as it undermines the people of South Africa.

“There should be serious consequence’s against all senior officials and councillors that gets a disclaimer from the Auditor General, for me, disclaimer simply means refusing to account” concluded premier Mathabatha during his address.