POOR PERFORMANCE COSTS W CAPE MILLIONS

Infrastructure Department is facing severe budget cuts due to inadequate performance

- NICOLA DANIELS

THE DA-led Western Cape Infrastructure Department has underperformed, its strategies fell short, lacking the substance needed to tackle the looming risks of underspending and, ultimately, poor performance which ultimately led to its budget being cut.

The Western Cape is among the four provinces set to lose hundreds of millions of rand allocated by the National Treasury to build houses, upgrade informal settlements and improve education infrastructure. Infrastructure MEC Tertius Simmers recently claimed that his department was in the dark about the reasons for the cuts and needed more information. However the national government refuted these claims, saying they had met with all provinces where the reasons for the decision were explained.

The National Department of Human Settlements explained that as the Transferring Officer of conditional grant funds, they were tasked not only with ensuring the transfers of grant funds to provinces and metros, but also to monitor performance of the funds in line with projected expenditure in the approved business plan, implemented projects on the ground as well as the set targets for the period under review.