Madam Speaker, Hon Premier, Members of the Legislature, officials and guests, I greet you all. It is common cause that DEDEAT is one of the most underfunded departments in the province. Despite this, it is this Department that bears the burden of economic development, which is the most crucial developmental objective our province and our country must achieve in order to stabilise our fragile and overcommitted fiscus. Sadly this is …


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Madam Speaker, Hon Premier, Hon Members, officials and guests, I greet you all. Madam Speaker, the Department of Health in the Eastern Cape remains beset with administrative, human resource and financial challenges. It is fair to say that these have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, but this is true for all departments. The greatest challenges in the Health Department are longstanding and have simply not been addressed adequately, because …


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Madam Speaker, Hon Premier, Members of the Legislature, officials and guests, I greet you all. Madam Speaker the Department known as DEDEAT constitutes three enormous and very important competencies which, in a perfect world, would be standalone departments as they play such a vital role in the economic development of communities, provinces and countries. These are, of course, Economic Development, Environmental Affairs and Tourism. One understands that departments that take …


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Madam Speaker, Hon Premier, Hon Members of the Legislature; officials and guests, I greet you all. Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by acknowledging the incredible work done by our Eastern Cape Healthcare workforce over the past year as they have been at the forefront of the fight against the dreadful Covid-19 pandemic, which has devastated so many lives across our province, and indeed across the globe. They are …


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On Monday evening, the President of South Africa proudly announced that the first batch of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, acquired from India to aid us in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, had arrived in the country. While this is certainly good news, particularly for our health care workers who continue to work under extreme pressure and will be first to receive the vaccine, unfortunately, it remains far too little, far …


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Madam Speaker, Honourable Premier, Honourable members of the House, officials and guests, I greet you all. Madam Speaker, a year ago we had not even heard the word Covid-19. A viral pandemic was something one read about in a good book, or watched in a scary movie. Little did we know that in a few short months, the world as we knew it would have changed forever. Entire new vocabularies …


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On the 25th of May this year, I put a motion with notice to the House in terms of Section 131 of the Eastern Cape Legislature Standing Rules of Order that called for the House to resolve that the Premier dismiss the MEC for Health. During a multi-party Whips meeting, the ANC objected to the motion being debated, based on faulty legal advice given to them that it is unconstitutional …


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Madam Speaker, Honourable Premier, Honourable Members of the House, officials and observers, I greet you all I wish to start by sending my heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those we have lost to the Covid-19 pandemic. Madam Speaker, our department of health is in the ICU. The leadership is incapable of implementing house resolutions, and has failed to fully implement plans. The Committee report highlights …


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Honourable Speaker, Honourable premier, Honourable members of the House, officials and guests, I greet you all When South Africa’s National Development Plan was launched in 2012, it included several admirable goals for the health sector, including raising the life expectancy of South Africans to at least 70 years, ensuring that the under 20s generation are largely free of HIV, significantly reducing the burden of disease and achieving infant and under …


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