Premier
During his visit to the Western Cape, President Ramaphosa stated that money was no object in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(1) Whether any commitments have been honoured in this regard since his visit; if not, by when can commitments be expected; if so, what are the relevant details;
(2) what does the intergovernmental approach towards a hotspot entail and (b) what has been the impact of the amendment to testing policy in the last seven days?
1. The Minister of Finance and Economic Opportunities wrote to the national Minister of Finance on 10 June 2020 outlining the forecasted cost for the Western Cape’s response to COVID-19 of approximately R5 billion and requesting that the commitments made during the visit by President Ramaphosa be honoured.
The Western Cape received its 2020 COVID adjustment letter on 24 June 2020. At this stage no changes have been made to the Provincial Equitable Share. However, provinces are expected to reprioritise a combined total of at least R20 billion within the equitable share portions towards the COVID-19 response. The Western Cape share of this is R2.051 billion.
In addition, an amount of R2.8 billion has been added to the new COVID-19 component within the HIV, TB, Malaria and Community Outreach Grant. This component compliments spending on PPE, ventilators and additional staff which includes the Cuban medical personnel. The Western Cape share of this is R552.220 million. However, the total reductions on Conditional Grants for the Province amount to R665. 3 million, of which the bulk of these reductions relate to the Human Settlements Development Grant, Education Infrastructure Grant and the Provincial Roads Maintenance Grant.
Taking these into account, the adjustment is a net negative for provinces, including for the Western Cape to an amount of R113.123 million in 2020/21.
No further commitments from a budgetary perspective have been made to date other than what is outlined in the Western Cape 2020 COVID adjustment letter on 24 June from the National Treasury. The National Adjustments budget was tabled on 24 June 2020 and therefore it is unlikely that further budgetary commitments will be made at this stage. The Western Cape will endeavour to optimize our share of direct national spending through IGR structures.
The specific details on the commitments which have been made by President Ramaphosa have not been made available and therefore further information on this matter cannot be provided by the Provincial Treasury team.
2. (a) The intergovernmental approach entails all government departments and sectors working collaboratively to stop transmission of the virus, especially in areas where the transmission is highest. Our hotspot intervention strategy focusses our combined efforts in these targeted areas with the focus to protect vulnerable people who are at high risk, and to prevent deaths.
(b) Due to the national backlog at the National Health Laboratory Services (at the time), the Western Cape Government changed its testing criteria in the Cape Metropole to preserve testing capacity and to get test results back quickly so that we can ensure speedy interventions to save lives. This means we only test people who:
- Were awaiting confirmation of diagnosis in hospitals
- Are over 55 years and have coronavirus symptoms;
- Are of any age with have coronavirus symptoms and have a comorbidity
- Those who live in a care or old age home and have coronavirus symptoms; and ;
- Health care workers
