Zille set to focus on service delivery

INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille will begin to re-establish her governments anti-corruption unit this year.

Cape Town - Making the public service work was a special focus for Premier Helen Zille when she presented the budget of her department in the provincial legislature today.

Zille announced that the Department of the Premier’s 2013/2014 budget of R853.8 million has increased by 14.15 percent, or R105.9 million, from last year, mainly due to an expansion in the services provided by the Corporate Services Centre to provincial departments, especially IT services.

To build a “capable state that’s professional, competent and responsive to the needs of citizens” was one of six pillars of the National Development Plan (NDP) and the Western Cape government was committed to playing its part to make it work, Zille said.

“Minister Trevor Manuel... said (last week) that fixing the public service was the first step towards future prosperity because no economic policy could succeed if the ‘engine room’ (government) did not work,” she said.

“The NDP makes a number of proposals for the creation of a capable state, including greater accountability of individual employees, rules restricting the business interests of public servants, a public service that is not weakened by cadre deployment and is insulated from political patronage as well as developing specialist and technical skills and improving operational systems within government.”

Zille said it was important to state the additional funding would be spent on new infrastructure and systems that would enable provincial departments to focus on service delivery.

“The department remains committed to its austerity drive and no-frills ethos, including closely monitoring and curbing unnecessary expenditure on hotels, cars and catering,” she said. “The department’s budget is divided into five programmes, namely, executive and administrative support, provincial-wide strategic management, human capital, the centre for e-innovation and corporate assurance.”

Executive support has been given R62.5m to provide back-office administration and assistance for cabinet engagements and meetings of the provincial top management and the Department of the Premier, as well as other key functions, such the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and departmental strategy.

Some of the targets under this programme include achieving an unqualified audit, spending 99 percent of the department’s budget and ensuring all required annual strategic and annual plans and annual and quarterly reports are submitted.

It also supports the Intergovernmental Committee, which has been established to remove blockages threatening the success of strategic projects that require province/city collaboration.

Provincial strategic management was aimed at, among others, overseeing the so-called Provincial Transversal Management System, and has been allocated R52.1m.

Zille said the provincial government would soon introduce an international relations strategy.

One of the key aims of this strategy would be to reposition the Western Cape as the green economy hub of Africa by promoting the province’s competitive advantage in renewable energy capacity, strong financial services sector and design, built environment and manufacturing sectors.

Cape Argus