North West Premier Lazarus Mokgosi has suggested that the province’s residents need to
improve their performance in the bedroom to boost its low population so it can qualify for a bigger slice of the budget.
Mokgosi told journalists on Friday that National
Treasury’s allocation of provincial budgets based on their population levels disadvantages sparsely-populated provinces like North West.
He said the R54-billion budget allocated to the province will not cover all of the resources required to provide better services to communities.
The province has been in the spotlight due to water scarcity, inadequate infrastructure and bad roads.
He said North West is small in comparison to Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, which have populations of more than 15 and 13-million, respectively.
He lamented the fact that municipal metros such as Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, and Tshwane have larger
budgets than the province.
He challenged the province’s residents to come to the party to help grow the population.
“When we were in Cape Town, somebody asked KZN people that because they have polygamous marriages, why is it that Gauteng population is greater than theirs?
“They could not answer because they are wondering how one man can marry five or six women…but now the challenge with us as North West is that we must pull up our socks, and fight this issue of having a small population.
“We must have a drive so that if we can have a target in the next two years we should have increased our population by at least 2-million,”
Mokgosi said.
uMkhonto we Sizwe’s Tebogo Ramashilabele said Mokgosi’s statement about a small budget allocation is unfounded.
“Lot of money has been returned to treasury as the province failed to use the money for its intentions and purpose. Therefore, the issue of allocation should not be the defence but rather misused of funds,” he said.
North West EFF deputy provincial secretary Justice Dabampe dismissed Mokgosi’s
suggestion.
“It is not the issue of insufficient budget allocation.
“In 2021/2022 they failed to spend R100-million, let’s leave the issue of insufficient [budget
allocation]; it shows that there is no political willingness from exco to address all issues,”
he said.
The DA’s Freddy Sonakile said the party will hold Mokgosi’s administration to account.
“We will scrutinise every promise, every project, and every document to ensure that we hold the ANC-led
government of North West accountable,” he said.
Rise Mzansi spokesperson Peter Tlouane said Mokgosi was bluffing.
“I don’t know why they like making these lousy excuses,” he said.
I don’t think northwest will ever have a capable premier in our lifetime. All of the have been useless. Now we have the worse one who talks about increasing the population. We should either have a DA, FF plus or PA premier in order to fix this province.
This province is long dead I don’t even know why people vote here bcz the government does nothing for them…I can tell you motsweding FM is the only basic service that the North West provide…am planning to move to Europe bcz RSA economy was harmed by a great government change and covid recently as for corruption it is not huge as the media say it .. the problem is RSA politicians are not business people ontop the technological era is here… our great country won’t survive…