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Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi.
Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi says the province has decided to reshuffle some heads of departments and remove others from their responsibilities.
This following a series of issues related to under-expenditure and under-performance in various departments across the province.
Lesufi says the decision also follows audit outcomes, which have revealed that some departments are not performing well.
Briefing the media in Midrand today, the Gauteng Premier says given how serious the issue of service delivery is, they could not overlook this.
He says the changes took effect on Friday.
[WATCH] Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi has removed and reshuffled several Heads of Department as of 1 August 2025. This comes after a damning report revealed at least R1.8 billion in budget underspending and missed service delivery targets. pic.twitter.com/OJuBJcjN6g
— SABC News (@SABCNews) August 3, 2025
“I also indicated on the 17th of July that there were departments that under spent seriously, the total under spend at that time stood at R1.8 billion; it has now gone to R1.3 billion after the authorisation of some of the transactions that we requested to be carried over. To me this was a serious underperformance by the heads of departments. There are also heads of departments that have missed their performance targets and we took serious exception that with the challenges that we are facing in service delivery, we can’t afford departments that are missing performance targets. Within that context, I’ve taken a decision to reshuffle and reset heads of departments.”
Inspections of infrastructure
Lesufi has also announced that they will conduct weekly physical inspections of infrastructure and service delivery challenges in the province, in preparation for the G20 summit.
This as the country prepares for the gathering of the world’s major economies taking place in November.
Johannesburg has being selected as the host city. However, critics have raised concerns regarding the city’s readiness, citing among others dilapidated infrastructure.
Lesufi says he will be conducting these inspections with the MECs and executive mayors.
“We have also resolved every Tuesday and we want to extend the invite to you. Every Tuesday myself with all the MECs together with the Executive Mayors we will physically inspect infrastructure and service delivery challenges in our province as part of the preparations for the G20. Which simply means every Tuesday we will walk around the entire province just to determine whether indeed we are ready.”
