Durban — KwaZulu-Natal’s two biggest departments, the Department of Education and the Department of Health, will struggle to pay their employees and will most likely need a bailout from the National Treasury before the end of the financial year.
The Department of Social Development will struggle to appoint new staff in the financial year which began just three weeks ago, Carol Coetzee, the head of the KZN Treasury Department revealed to members of the Finance Committee this week.
Coetzee was leading a discussion on the Division of Revenue Bill.
She told members that the budget allocation would not be enough to cover the Compensation Of Employees (COE) for the current financial year as the allocations made in the new financial year had to cover the commitments made in the past.
COE has been cited as the main concern by members who have pointed out how the item takes two-thirds of the budget from each of the departments, leaving the remainder to pay for goods and services.
“The answer is no. The budget is not going to be adequate to cover the COE. The allocation that has been provided is to cover the increase in the wage bill in 2023. It does not deal with the issue of unfunded further posts where you have warm bodies and you do not have COE, so we are still going to have the same challenges as we had last year,” she told members.
Coetzee added that the dire state of affairs was set for education, health and social development, as had been the case over the past years.
According to the HOD, because of the financial constraints, the provincial education department was already failing to meet the norms and standards with regard to the allocation of teachers when compared to the number of learners.
This was in response to committee member Maggie Govender, who questioned why such a large chunk of money went to paying staff.
She questioned whether anything could be done to ensure that more money was made available to ensure that the departments met their core mandates, as opposed to being the equivalent of employment agencies.
Coetzee expressed optimism that the National Treasury would consider the myriad of challenges facing the province and provide further funding to enable an efficient public service.
“We are facing a very challenging year going ahead and we will implore, as we always have, Treasury to look kindly at KZN,” the HOD continued, citing the province’s population size and the need to meet service demands as among the key drivers of costs.
She noted how KwaZulu-Natal had also been hammered by natural disasters and how this had impacted on the province’s long-term service delivery ambitions.
Chief Director at the National Treasury, Wendy Fanoe, conceded that service delivery was affected by staff vacancies, adding that this had been among the tough decisions that the government had to take in order to contain costs.
She told committee members that one of the main concerns for the country was the spiralling debt, and if it was not dealt with, it would mean that the only available money would be used to pay off debt.
She said this had prompted the government to look at all areas where growth could be curtailed, from national, provincial and local government levels, and the wage bill had been identified as one of the key drivers of runaway expenditure on the public bill.
Sunday Tribune