By More Matshediso
BLOEMFONTEIN – The health services in Free State are set for a major revamp following an injection of a further R166 million into the department’s fast dwindling resources.
Free State Finance MEC Seeiso Mohai said on Thursday, November 15 that the Department of Health in the Free State would get 89 percent of the supplementary budget out of the R186 million additional funding allocated to provinces by national department of health.
He said the amount is for the hospital revitalization grant, which is reward for the province’s attempts to accelerate delivery of hospital infrastructure.
“The health department has been doing well hence it is being rewarded this much,” Mohai said.
He said R59.2 million has been allocated as a rollover from previous financial year towards health infrastructure development.
The department also gets a rollover of R27.5 million to assist in expanding HIV counselling and testing as well as further improving access to antiretroviral drugs and related services.
Mohai announced that the provincial government had taken bold steps in addressing the shortage of doctors.
“To this effect we have provided additional funding for 188 students to the tune of R18 million to study medicine in Cuba,” MEC said.
Mohai revealed that total funding for the adjustments budget was R934 million which excludes R5.4 million that relates to Retained Revenues by the Provincial Legislature emanating from previous financial years.
“This budget is funded from rollovers, equitable shares, conditional grants, provincial cash reserves, and provincial own revenue,” he said
“Firstly, there are rollovers from the previous financial year which amount to R174.7 million. Secondly, we have an amount of R264.1 million which is a transfer from National Government as part of the equitable share to deal with issues of improvement in conditions of service. Thirdly, there is a R171.8 million for conditional grants, which is also a transfer from national government,” he added.
Mohai said the provincial treasury had sourced R321.6 million from provincial cash reserves as well R1.6 million from provincial own revenues.
Meanwhile, three areas were identified as the province’s priorities for the 2012/13 adjustment budget including road maintenance, human settlement and education.
“An amount of R200 million was reprioritized towards roads in the current financial year. This basically shows that vigorous evaluations of budget could assist in unlocking funds towards key priorities,” said Mohai.
He indicated that R60.1 million was allocated to cater for maintenance of provincial roads. The amount includes a rollover worth R53.5 million from the previous financial year as well as R6.5 million which comes from reprioritization exercise.
“We admit that there are terrible roads in the province as there are lots of potholes in many roads.”
An amount of R244 million is earmarked for improvements in conditions of service, which has been channelled to various departments to cover a higher than expected wage settlement shortfall of 2 per cent, including R5.8 million which is a conditional grant set aside for FET Colleges to also address shortfall on wage settlement costs.
Human Settlements received a rollover of R30.1 million. It comprises of R27.4 million which relates to human settlement development grants and R2.7 million for housing disaster relief.
“Education remains a top priority for this government and thus R189.9 million is allocated to cater for Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). This allocation will greatly assist in dealing with challenges relating to procurement of textbooks for the next academic year.
“An amount of R93 million is set aside to provide for bursaries and laptops for deserving students in the province. Education department receives a rollover of R1.8 million which relates to various conditional grants.
He said other priorities funded by the adjustment budget include R32 million for Sports, Arts and Culture as well as R2.5 million for Library services.
“Given the projected weakness in the economic environment, the National Treasury has revised tax revenue downwards by R5 billion in the current year.
“As part of the New Growth Path and the Free State Growth Development Strategy which will be launched soon, reprioritization also means encouraging capital spending, particular in infrastructure that will stimulate the economy in ways that will expand the productive sectors and thus create jobs on a large scale.”
He said the Legislature has the powers to force government departments to work within their allocated budget. “We urge departments and public entities to remain within their baseline and scale down spending on non-core or low priority programmes, to improve efficiency on supply chain management and service delivery and to reduce wastage and reprioritize savings towards government priorities.’’