Zille offers ‘budget of opportunity’

Cape Town - 130914 - Donning a blue beret WC Premier Helen Zille makes her speech from the stage to roughly 1000 people. The DA held a rally at Westridge Gardens Amphitheatre encouraging people to register to vote. PICTURE: THOMAS HOLDER. REPORTER: BIANCA CAPAZORIO

Cape Town - 130914 - Donning a blue beret WC Premier Helen Zille makes her speech from the stage to roughly 1000 people. The DA held a rally at Westridge Gardens Amphitheatre encouraging people to register to vote. PICTURE: THOMAS HOLDER. REPORTER: BIANCA CAPAZORIO

Published Mar 24, 2014

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Cape Town - Premier Helen Zille delivered the Department of the Premier budget speech on Monday morning and welcomed an increase of 13.8 percent to just over R1 billion, compared to last year.

The speech outlines the budget priorities and allocations in the Department of the Premier for the coming financial year (2014/15).

Zille, speaking in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, said the increase would support a number of services and “enhance” five programmes, namely:

* Executive Support. This, Zille said, was a key aspect of administration,that helped curb wasteful expenditure. She said its importance was highlighted by the current public attention on Nkandla. There would also be a roll-out of a workplace health and safety training and awareness programme.

* Provincial Strategic Management. This facilitates co-ordination and alignment of provincial departments. The “green economy” initiative and the 2014 World Design Capital were examples of sub-programmes.

* People Management. Zille said an organisation’s (or regional government’s) success or failure comes down to the people who staff it and the equipment and management they have to support them.

* Centre for e-Innovation. The aim of the programme for which R576.7million had been allocated, was to make information services more accessible in a bid to keep up with the global technology.

* Corporate Assurance. The aim of this programme was to keep fraud at a provincial government level in check. The budget for the coming financial year is R115.1m, an increase of almost 18 percent from the previous budget.

Zille said it should be seen as a “budget of opportunity”.

 

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Cape Argus

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