05 Mar 2020

Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has requested over P8 billion as budget for the  2020/21 financial year.

Presenting the ministry’s budget proposals, Minister Eric Molale indicated that the recurrent budget proposal was P7 billion, reflecting an increase of 11.22 per cent.

From this budget proposal, Mr Molale indicated that the Department of Local Government, Finance and Procurement Services would get the largest share of P4.8 billion, which would go towards local authorities revenue support grant, food supplies and other items.

Department of Social Protection, Mr Molale said, would be allocated P1.4 billion, which would cater for old age pension, orphan care programme and destitute cash allowance and other items.

The third largest share of the budget of over P682 million will be for the Department of Tribal Administration, which would be used for personnel emoluments and other items.

The remaining funds, he said, would be shared by five departments. Under development budget, Mr Molale proposed P1 billion for development projects and programmes.

He said the proposed budget represented a decrease of 29.3 per cent from the 2019/2020 financial year’s budget.

Mr Molale indicated that the proposed development budget would be shared amongst the ministry’s programmes such as Ipelegeng, constituency community projects, development of primary education facilities, local government infrastructure investment and services, social welfare and development programme, Tribal Administration Infrastructure Development and RADP projects.

In an effort to align the budget proposals to the transformational agenda, Mr Molale said his ministry had identified priority areas such as improving service delivery, effective social protection programmes, maintenance of public infrastructure, prompt payment to service providers and suppliers as well as provision of ICT infrastructure and equipment to primary schools and dikgotla.

He said those were in line with the mid-term review priorities and the budget might not fully fund those priorities as the budget would be transitional.

The minister, however, said circumstances dictated that sizeable resources be provided to his ministry to meet those priorities.

In addition, Mr Molale noted that services and programme delivery at local level had been slow and the impact was minimal.

He said monitoring and evaluation had not been comprehensive. Therefore, he said, one of the ministry’s priorities would be to urgently implement Monitoring and Evaluation Framework known as Village Scorecard.

He said the scorecard would be assessed against performance dimensions of accessibility, accountability, timeliness and quality of service.

Amongst objectives of the framework, Mr Molale would cover assessment of delivery and availability of selected government services to citizens and facilitation of the participation of the public in the evaluation of government services.

In addition, he explained that would be the first step to improve coordination at local level, and they intend to install the framework and get it working during the coming financial year.

The ministry, he noted, would ensure that performance audits were undertaken at Councils, indicating that he would engaging with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development and the

Auditor General on the matter to ensure that government and the public get value for money in the service delivery offering and eliminate wastage. ENDS