The Mpumalanga premier, Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane, delivered her State of the Province Address on Friday March 1.
It was also an official opening of the sixth Mpumalanga provincial legislature , Mtshweni – Tsipane arrived in the red-carpet for the state of address ,she elaboration the highlights of the annual reports regarding the performance of the provincial government in their previous plans and projects.
“I want to say, we have left the valley, though we have not reached the mountaintop. I salute the African National Congress. It has fulfilled our expectations in its role as the leader of the great march towards the attainment of a national democratic society. As we approach the end of the tenure of this current administration and move towards celebrating another great milestone in our history of 30 years since we ushered in the democratic dispensation, we need to reflect on the journey that we have travelled together, acknowledge the tremendous progress that we have made, identify our shortcomings and mistakes and forge ahead with a common purpose to better the lives of our people,” she said, before going down memory lane and outlining what the ANC has been able to achieve since taking power in 1994.
“We want to reflect on the past and the present. Numbers don’t lie. Let us pause a bit and reflect on a Mpumalanga of 1994 and the Mpumalanga of today. When we were elected to office in 1994, our population was a mere 3.3 million people. Today, Mpumalanga is home to 5.1 million people. The gross domestic product, that is the value of goods and services produced in Mpumalanga, was R46b. Today our economy has grown in leaps and bounds to more than R530b, 12 times bigger than what it was, becoming the fourth-largest economy on the continent. In 1996, there were about 627 000 people employed in the province. Today, our economy employs more than 1.25 million people,” she said.
The premier spoke about fixing the roads, potholes that were damaged during the heavy rains, they upgraded 802 kilometers from the surface and the rehabilitation of 1274 km of the roads across the provincial.
The province is open to share land amongst those who are interested to make use of it in the agricultural programs, males and females including those who live with disabilities, the program of farmers as plough up to 199 169 hectares of agricultural cumulative and established no less than 12720 food gardens.
In the hospitalization and free medical care there’s an increase in number of patients who access oncology services in the province ,from 1556 to a total of 18125 by January 2024.
The is an increase of childhood learning and development as Madan speaker Refilwe Mtshweni encourage matruculants to further their studies bursaries scheme eg mogale bursary, NSFAS,SETAS act she also encourages them to consider teaching as a career to register funding through fundza lushaka bursary scheme.
In the infrastructure of water and sanitation over the past 30 years at least R27 billion has been set aside and spent to improve infrastructure in all the district municipalities managed to install new raw water pumps, madam speaker also spoke about the disaster management and traditional institutions and ingoma custome practice, culture, sports and recreation mostly safety and security the data shared by the minister of police shows that crime is high towards the end of the week and weekend and the will be operation SUYAVUTHA operating in the various Hotspots of the province
