All of the Democratic Alliance, Eastern Cape Legislature Caucus’s press releases
The generator at the B. J. Vorster Hospital in Kareedouw malfunctioned at the start of the year, endangering patients’ lives whenever loadshedding is implemented. Three weeks have passed, but it has still not been repaired. To make matters worse, ESKOM says the hospital cannot be exempted from loadshedding! Nurses are now forced to bring torches with them to work, while critical life-saving procedures must be scheduled according to the latest …
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The Democratic Alliance (DA) congratulates the Eastern Cape Matric class of 2022 for their dedication and resilience to achieve excellent results, despite the numerous challenges they faced. We congratulate every matric learner who has reaped the rewards of their hard work. Those who have put in extra hours with Saturday classes, attending summer and winter schools and participating in the LAIC programme to make up for the lost time in …
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Hundreds of Grade 12 learners from Pakamani Senior Secondary School in Butterworth have had their futures compromised because of the inept bungling of their Life Orientation paper during the matric exams last year. Not only will these learners not receive their results with the rest of South Africa’s class of 2022 matrics this week, but they will be forced to rewrite the subject. The subsequent delays in getting their results …
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The Eastern Cape Scholar Transport programme is in crisis. More than 100 000 learners, with no other means of getting to school, are facing the very real possibility of not having transport next year, as funds for the programme have been depleted. This can only create hardship and heartbreak for those learners who won’t be able to access their right to education. This puts a handbrake on their future opportunities. …
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There are more than 65 000 households in the Eastern Cape who are waiting for the issuing of their title deeds of their Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) properties. The DA is calling on the MEC for Human Settlements, Siphokazi Lusithi, to review the Title Deed Restoration Project and put mechanisms in place to clear the backlog as soon as possible, so that our people can sleep soundly, knowing that …
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The DA welcomes the marginal decrease in the unemployment rate for the third quarter. However, when one looks at the expanded unemployment rate, more than half of the province’s labour force is still unemployed. There is a long way to go to break the unemployment cycle. The only way we will turn the unemployment crisis around is if the ANC changes its hostile stance towards business and accepts that they …
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The latest adjustments budget, tabled in the Eastern Cape Legislature last week, made it clear that there is simply not enough money available to rescue the failing Department of Health that is factually bankrupt. Despite nearly a billion rand in additional funding, there is still a significant shortfall in what is needed to bring financial stability to the Department, which had accruals of close on R5 billion at the beginning …
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The unimpressive adjustment budget that was tabled by Finance MEC Mlungisi Mvoko in the Eastern Cape Legislature today is a sad reflection of the state of the fiscus in general. The MEC failed to come up with any innovative ideas and out-of-the-box thinking to shift resources away from a non-core expenditure to core expenditure. We simply cannot carry on in this manner and bold steps need to be taken to …
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The failing infrastructure across the province, and indeed the country, is destroying small towns. Nowhere is the true neglect of government more evident than in the way municipal infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate. I raised this matter in the National Council of Provinces yesterday, when I debated on the State of Municipal Infrastructure under the theme of “Building a viable Municipal Infrastructure Network for Effective and Efficient delivery of …
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A tsunami of violent crime continues to sweep through the Eastern Cape, fuelled by a culture of lawlessness which sees people brutally murdered, buildings hijacked, long-distance buses attacked and taxi warfare. The second quarter crime statistics, released today, once again reinforce the province’s reputation as the killing field of South Africa. In the three months under review, 1 303 people were murdered across the province, a 31,3% increase compared to …
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