N West to spend more to improve service

Johannesburg - North West departments have been told to increase spending on infrastructure and conditional grants to speed up service delivery, finance MEC Paul Sebegoe said on Tuesday.

This was after the North West medium-term expenditure committee held a meeting with all provincial departments and public entities to review spending trends for the six months ended September.

"We want to see more labour intensive projects that... reduce unemployment and create jobs for our people," Sebegoe said.

Departments that spent far below the 50% threshold would not receive any extra budget, as per their request, during next month's adjustment budget.

Neither under- nor over-expenditure would be tolerated, he said.

"Sometimes officials disappoint us as politicians. When you postpone projects' implementation we must be aware that we cannot postpone hunger as most of our people live in poverty," Sebegoe said.

He directed that a forum on the expanded public works programme be established, consisting of senior managers who would be able to take necessary decisions. This would help ensure that more people were absorbed into the programme in mid-November, creating labour-intensive jobs to help more people earn a living.