The provincial government has set aside R3.2m to establish a litigation unit within premier Oscar Mabuyane’s office — a move it hopes will help curb medico-legal claims against the department of health.
Acting finance MEC Nonkqubela Pieters made the announcement while delivering the province’s midterm expenditure budget adjustments at the Bhisho legislature on Thursday.
She said the multidisciplinary task team would comprise officials from Mabuyane’s office, the provincial treasury, health department and a number of independent legal minds.
The announcement comes a day after Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu revealed that provincial medico-legal claims in the 2018/19 financial year had increased to R29bn from R24bn the previous year.
Makwetu pointed out that the figure exceeded the department’s entire annual budget by R5bn.
Makwetu, in his latest audits of all national and provincial government departments and state entities, revealed that a total of R797m was paid by the health department for medico-legal claims in the financial year under review, of which R460m “was funded by an overdraft facility”.
Makwetu said this funding model “was not sustainable and placed further pressure on the provincial fiscus”.
Addressing the legislature, Pieters said the country had witnessed “extremely unpleasant economic conditions in which it has become virtually impossible to continue with business as usual”.
She said the budget adjustment was tabled after “taking into account new developments in our political and administrative environment”.
“Our point of departure for this adjustment is that the fiscal resources of our country are depleted, national debt has exceeded R3 trillion and the economy is not growing enough to create new jobs, thus leading to a constrained tax base.
“Persistent slow economic growth has also severely constrained the government’s fiscal resources.”
Pieters said the country and province’s economic growth had "remained subdued” for most of the post-2008 recession, partly due to insufficient growth in global demand.
“I concede that government support will be necessary for agriculture, construction and manufacturing if our goal of generating inclusive and sustained growth over the longer term is to be realised,” she said.
The provincial government, Pieters said, had now committed an extra R77m towards the National Health Insurance and human resource capacitation grant, to be used to hire health professionals “to protect health outcomes of the province”.
“We have also allocated R491m to protect the delivery of medicines and national health laboratory services.”
In a bid to address the crippling drought situation, Pieters said R130m had been set aside to assist in mitigating the disaster, while an additional amount to deal with this drought problem will be received after the provincial government met up with its national counterparts.
Pieters said R115m would be allocated to the public works department “to ensure that payment of property rates and taxes is effected to municipalities”.
Through the transport department, Pieters said, the province would “ring-fence” an additional R60.7m grant to fund repairs of roads affected by disasters.
She said R6.9m had been made available to upgrade access roads to the Mkhambathi, Silaka, Dwesa and Hluleka nature reserves.
Pieters said, “there is a ray of light at the end of the tunnel as the province has achieved growth in the renewable energy sector”.
“Seventeen of our facilities — one solar farm and 16 wind farms — were approved, with a total investment value of R33.8bn.
“So far, construction has been completed in 13 facilities. They are now operational, while four are under construction,” she said.
An amount of R8m had been committed to funding three film projects in the province, and Pieters said that over the 2019 medium term expenditure framework, “the total investment for this industry amounts to R116.4m to create employment opportunities for potential filmmakers to revitalise the province’s film industry”.
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