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Eastern Cape SOPA Expectations

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Premier Noxolo Kiviet will deliver the Eastern Cape’s annual State of the Province Address in Bhisho tomorrow (Friday, 22 February 2013).

The Eastern Cape Premier, Noxolo Kiviet, must spell out how she will firmly take the command of the provincial government and be the leader and decision maker that this province needs to put it on the high road to good governance. The people are crying out for some game changing announcements.

Madam Premier, use your State of the Province Address and take the lead. Your MEC’s must stop bemoaning lack of accountability within their departments and take action without fear of favour.
Corruption, insider trading, disastrous audit outcomes, failing departments and lack of service delivery continues to scare away investors. In the last quarter of 2012, the Eastern Cape lost 69 000 jobs, the highest of all the provinces. A job is the best passport out of poverty

Job losses, coupled with poor service delivery, are a ticking time bomb. Protests as we have seen in Sterkspruit and Walmer Township in Port Elizabeth are the tip of the iceberg.

The Premier needs to spell out measures to:

  • Improve service delivery so we can create the right environment for job creation;
  • Deal with the education crisis, where 7 152 surplus teachers hold the province to ransom at a cost of R1,8 billion;
  • Deal with corrupt officials involved in the Health Department;
  • How the policy of civil servants not doing business with the province will be enforced; and
  • How departments will work with the SAPS to reduce the crime rate and in particular violence against women and children.

The DA has a vision of this province being a place of rising opportunity for all its people, where employment is growing and crime is falling, teaching is improving, roads are functional and our hospitals are places of care and healing. This is a dream worth striving for and something we are passionately committed to.

Bobby Stevenson, MPL

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.