THE WITHDRAWAL of American funding to help fight HIV/AIDS in the country has made the government invest R26 billion in the states to fight the virus.
The Minister of Finance, Mr. Enoch Godongwana, announced that the programs to fight the virus in the country, will continue as in the money he announced, R410 million of it will directly deal with special programs.
He said this after the government of Mr. Donald Trump set up a program to help different countries fight the virus last year.
“This money will help pregnant and pregnant mothers not pass the virus to their children. It will deal with the task of buying ARV drugs to fight this virus,” he said yesterday while presenting this year’s budget in Parliament.
He said there is R21.3 billion, to pay and hire doctors in different hospitals. He allocated R334.3 billion for health.
He also revealed that there are hospitals that will be renovated, including King Albert Luthuli in this province and others in other areas.
Education received the largest budget as it allocated R527.2 billion.
“The Early Childhood Development sector has been allocated R9.9 billion to pay the workers. This sector has been allocated R18 billion in the next three years so that it can accommodate about 300 000 students. This money will support each student with R24 per day. The school meal program, which benefits 9.9 million students, has been allocated R33.9 billion,” he said.
The National Students’ Financial Aid Scheme, a fund that supports studies in higher education institutions, has been allocated R54.3 billion.
“This fund will support 744,203 students from poor families. They will be able to study in educational institutions. Higher education received R155.8 billion.”
He allocated R358.6 billion for primary education.
Another thing that has emerged is that over 4,000 ghost government employees have been identified in different departments.
They were identified after a campaign to identify ghost workers in the public sector payroll system, Persal.
“We have identified 4,323 workers who did not identify themselves and their salaries will be suspended. We are doing this in collaboration with the Department of Basic Education, which is conducting a similar campaign to identify ghosts,” he said.
He said they are also planning to have a program where all government employees will sign.
It has been revealed about ghosts in the government as the Department of Public Works and Administration, started this program to identify these ghosts, who earn money when they are not there.
Godongwana said that in the end they want to know the number of government employees so that they can plan properly when making the budget.