-
Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi delivers the State of the Province Address in Pretoria.
Political analyst Dr Dale McKinley says Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s State of the Province Address (SOPA) lacked the required interventions to address the challenges facing the province. He says the challenges include crime.
McKinley says the province should not have established the Crime Wardens Unit because it duplicates the work of the police.
“Let us take for instance Panyaza’s green bombers, the wardens, 12 000 of them. But yet what we see the Police Minister indicated the other day that the Gauteng crime rate has seriously escalated. At times what appears on the surface and what is the reality in the day-to-day experiences are very different. I think there is a feeling that the premier has been much of a grandstander and not much of a deliverer.”
Infrastructure plans
Lesufi has announced some infrastructure plans, saying he has instructed teams at the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) to repair potholes within 72 hours of it being reported.
Lesufi says he has been appointed to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to identify potholes on Johannesburg roads and notify the agency.
The Premier will be meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa and the province’s local government to discuss the 13 major issues affecting the province.
“We are putting up the system, we have appointed CSIR – to pick up any pothole that develops and we said to our staff 72 hours after it has been reported to us – let’s repair it within 72 hours. Traffic lights, the kind of traffic lights that we have, are outdated, so we have identified 400 that we want to replace as quickly as possible. So, we are attending to it – we call them G13 now. These are 13 problems that we need to resolve as government and on Friday in a meeting with the executive mayors just to put a concrete plan that will address this kind of situation.”
Lesufi says the provincial government plans to build 11 new hospitals and 18 new schools across the province. He says these measures will go a long way in addressing some of the service delivery challenges the province faces.
Lesufi says the majority of the clinics are now rendering a 24-hour service to communities.
“As Gauteng province, we have already approved 11 new hospitals that are going to be built in various cities across the province. We have also expanded to 29 hospitals that have already daycare centers. So that they can increase the bed occupancy. And also provide viability of health services in our province. It is very important that we work with the private sector to reduce the backlog of beds in our province.”
