Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi has set out to use the financial year that just got underway to expedite among others, the diversification of the economy, eliminating infrastructure backlog, creating mass employment and ensuring reliable energy reliability.
The term of office of the sixth administration is expected to come to an end in May and Lesufi who is seeking another mandate from residents of Gauteng said in his State of the Province Address on Monday that the province had great potential but its path to prosperity was now held by among others, rampant crime and the ongoing electricity crisis among others.
Economy
Gauteng was developed on the strength of mining but Lesufi said the economy is being diversified with the Westrand the province’s only mining hub.
“With the west rand there are two economies that we are going to introduce. The first one, that the west rand remains the only area where mining will continue to happen in our province. And therefore its very important that we protect west rand and I’ll come later to ensure that its indeed the mining hub or the new mining hub of our province.” he said.
Infrastructure
Lesufi said the diversification project is already bearing fruit with major players in the financial services sector and telecommunications having their headquarters in Gauteng. The Premier said his administration is doing its part by ensuring that it provides among others reliable infrastructure including fast internet connectivity.
“Those small businesses will no longer struggle to get connectivity in our province. Those schools will no longer struggle to get connectivity. The public institutions will never struggle to get connectivity. If you don’t know the new economy is data, the new economy is wifi and we are proud as a province that we are leading on that particular front,” said the Premier.
Lufi said informal settlements were frustrating his government’s infrastructure development programme and vowed to eliminate them by providing land to the needy.
Informal Settlements must come to an end. We cant have so many Informal Settlements in our province. We’ve got almost seven hundred Informal Settlements in our province. We’ve started a process of ensuring that we tar those particular land sites, we put water, we put electricity, we also put sewar so that young people that need houses will be allocated sites and they can build their own houses and move out of Informal Settlements,” he said.
Job Creation
Lesufi suggested he was killing two birds with one stone through his nasi’s pani initiative that has seen the creation of thousands of jobs mostly in crime prevention.
“When I addressed this house almost twelve months ago there were seven thousand young people that were unemployed, there were seven thousand young people that were despondent, there were seven thousand young people that were relying on social grants. There were seven thousand young people that felt the future is doomed and that’s the end of them.
“Madam speaker we are proud to announce that this seven thousand is today in this house as law enforcement agencies. They’re here to fight crime, they’re here no longer relying on social grants, they’re here no longer relying on handouts, they’re here permanently employed to go and fight crime in our country. They’re here to make sure that our communities are safe,” he said.
Energy
The Premier called out Eskom for cutting power supply in a disruptive and insensitive fashion and said his government has contracted City Power to help find ways of reducing reliance on the national grid which has for several years not been able to meet demand levels.