Chairperson, I was going to use the adage, "Look after the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves," but I see hon Koornhof has already used that. Just in response, Minister, I do, however, hope we are having a cocktail after the budget! [Laughter.]
I would like to take this opportunity firstly to congratulate the hon Minister, whom I have known for many years as a fellow KwaZulu-Natalian, on his appointment and I do hope that he captains the ship with as much energy, verve, and vigour as he did Sars. He did a very good job in collecting revenue; now he has a great responsibility of ensuring that that hard-earned taxpayers' money is spent effectively and efficiently. I also want to congratulate hon Mr Nene on his reappointment. He was our former chairperson of finance. Chairperson, I am going to be focusing on value for money, which the hon Minister referred to and touch on four areas, one being provincial spending, over which Treasury has an oversight role; municipalities and the monitoring of municipalities; the Land Bank, which the hon Minister has touched on; and bus transport subsidies and the relationship with the Department of Transport.
The spending habits of some government institutions and departments leave much to be desired and definitely do not give the taxpayers value for their money. The IFP has, therefore, taken note of the hon Minister's comments where he stated, inter alia, that the department has set itself bold targets, such as investigating and monitoring corruption in public procurement processes. We will be monitoring these bold targets closely to ascertain whether they have the intended effect.
A legislative mandate of the National Treasury, as contained in the Public Management Finance Act, is to monitor the implementation of provincial budgets. However, it is very surprising that KwaZulu-Natal, with an overdraft of R3 billion, has not, as yet, faced the wrath of the Treasury in terms of section 100. I remember very clearly, when I was an MEC in KwaZulu-Natal in 1997 and the province had an overdraft of R500 million, that the Treasury intervened and took over the administration of KwaZulu- Natal; and yet we now have an overdraft of six times that amount.
However, Chairperson, who has caused it now? Who has caused the R3 billion overdraft now? It is mainly the Departments of Education and Health. What makes matters worse is that we went through a report of the Auditor-General yesterday, and I am glad the Deputy Auditor-General is here, and this was a special report and a performance audit of entities that are connected with government employees and doing business with national departments. A number of employees have been cited as doing business either through their spouses, directly or indirectly.
All provinces have responded to what was called an exception report, except KwaZulu-Natal. For the last six months, they have not responded to a single query of the Auditor-General, asking them for reasons why these officials were engaged in businesses either with their own departments or with other departments. Something is wrong there.
What has happened with the R3 billion overdraft, hon Minister, is that every department in KwaZulu-Natal has had to face a budget cut of 7,5% in the MTEF for the next three years. Now the people of KwaZulu-Natal are going to suffer because of some irresponsible directors-general, officials and probably political heads. We would like the Treasury to look into that.
I want to turn to municipalities. Municipalities are the level of government which is closest to the people and, therefore, have the best knowledge of the specific needs of people in surrounding communities. Here my point is that whilst we have the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Scopa, at national level and provincial accounts committees at provincial level, there is no obligation on municipalities to have public accounts committees.
I do understand that in terms of Treasury guidelines - I think it is section 121 and 124 - the Treasury may provide guidelines in that respect, although it is not binding on municipalities. I think we need to reach a stage where even at municipalities there is monitoring and evaluation of the spending.
That is where a lot of corruption is taking place. That is where, hon Chairperson, people are being killed. Councillors kill councillors, not along political lines but even in the same political party because of business interests that they have. We really need to look into the formation of municipal public accounts committees.
Chairperson, I want to turn to the Land Bank, and I am glad that the hon Minister has informed us in this House that there is a turnaround in the administration of the Land Bank. That is remarkable, because we know what the Land Bank was; we know how terrible the administration was; we know about loans that were granted to certain people to buy golf estates and residential property. Referring to that, a few years ago there was a report on certain officials in the Land Bank who were involved in these shenanigans. We haven't seen that report yet, and we want the people who were granting those loans and those who received those loans to be arrested and put behind bars.
We also want the Treasury to inform us what the relationship is now with the Department of Transport vis--vis the bus subsidies and what is happening in Durban where hundreds of thousands of commuters have been left stranded and have to pay exorbitant fees to travel to work. Thank you, Chairperson. [Time expired.]