Opposition parties challenge budget speech content
JOBURG – In a budget debate, opposition parties had voiced their disagreement with the most issues contained in the budget speech by Member Mayoral Committee of Finance, Geoffrey Makhubo.
Freedom Front Plus councillor, Franco de Lange said the party was grateful for the six kilolitres of free household water the city council was providing to residents, and the pensioner rebates on tariffs. However, he said most of the progress in the City of Johannesburg was a one-way street and flowing into areas where the African National Congress would gather the most votes for the 2016 elections.
Read about the 2015/2016 Budget Speech
De lange said, “We pose the question of how much of the R100 billion budget over the next 10 years will be spent in the leafy suburbs. Further to this, if we currently have a healthy cash balance of R5 billion as mentioned by Makhubo, we know that the bulk of this money is subsidised by government grants and external loans.”
He added that Johannesburg had one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world. “As Johannesburg contributes 17 percent of gross domestic product, Makhubo mentioned a growth rate of 4.7 percent into 2016. The Freedom Front Plus does not agree with this as the National GDP is shrinking on a quarterly basis.”
De Lange said the City needed to pay more attention to entrepreneurial programmes and Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises or the ruling party would make the same mistake as the National Party did by absorbing unemployed people into government parastatals.
Democratic Alliance councillor Vasco Da Gama said, “We have heard your voice Makhubo. Yet many residents will look in vain to find where their requests are mentioned in the budget. More than 900 petitions, mostly concerning the Johannesburg Roads Agency and housing problems, are outstanding. That excludes petitions which have not been captured on the system.”
