The Eastern Cape Premier Lubabalo Oscar Mabuyane delivered a speech on the State of the Province address on the 22nd of February at Abbostford Christian Center in East London. He was giving a report on how far the government has progressed to fulfill their electoral mandate, this follows after they tabled a five-year plan to build the Eastern Cape they want on the 28th of June 2019.
Improving the performance of Eastern Cape Education system is one of the tasks that could help to build better Eastern Cape, as the province faced a major challenge in terms of its education outcomes. In response to this problem the government has sustained investment in core education infrastructure by building schools, providing scholar transport, school nutrition, quality teacher training, and development of technological solutions and the early delivery of learning and teaching materials. He elaborated and said that Eastern Cape education system is starting to function like a well-oiled machine and the government is going to provide all necessary support to school to get the Province there.
In promoting access to Healthcare and encouraging healthy lifestyle, the government has built a brand new Cecelia Makhiwane Hospital in Buffalo City Municipality and Siphethu Hospital in Alfred Ndzo.”As part of our strategy to improve the output of Healthcare workers in the province, we succeeded in lobbying for the establishment of second medical school in our Province, in Nelson Mandela University. The School admitted its third cohort of medical students this year and we can’t wait to have them Graduate to help us fight the burden of diseases in our communities” Mabuyane added.
He emphasized on the deliverance of more ambulances this year adding to the 312 that has been delivered since 2019.
In the past five years 115 informal settlements were upgraded and over 57 000 households benefited including the Dacower informal settlement in Mdantsane which was transformed to formal housing settlement.
According to the researchers findings, the province unemployment mostly affects young people particularly youth not in employment, education or training, in the coming month of April there will be a launch of Mega Skills Project (MerSETA) that will benefit to more than 10 000 young people. The government has made and will continue making interventions to curb youth employment.
“We will work with municipalities to ramp up the reticulation of water going forward to ensure more communities have access. We welcome the publishing of gazette by Minister of Water and Sanitation, which enabled the extension of the area of operation of Amatola water to the whole province”.
The Eastern is developing over 11, 400 megawatts of wind, solar, battery storage and gas to power projects that have initiated or finalized environmental impact assessments. Through the Integrated National Electrification Programme government has connected electricity to 112, 000 households in the past 5 years.
In conclusion the Premier said that he is looking forward to archiving greater things and he urge all the eligible voters in the province to take part in the 2024 elections to be held on 29 May to defend our democracy and advance a better life for all. He added “even when temperatures heat up during the election period, I call upon the citizens of our Province to safeguard and protect existing infrastructure because we will need it when the elections are over. Let us reject violence and economic sabotage in favor of socio economic progress”.