Size of KZN budget cuts ‘will impact service delivery’
An economist has weighed in on the KZN
government's move to implement massive budget cuts over the next seven years.
On Tuesday, KZN Premier Thami Ntuli announced that the provincial government is looking to cut around R150 million every year to pay off a R10 billion debt to service providers.
Azar Jammine, chief economist at Econometrix, says the size of the budget cuts will impact the levels of service delivery in the province.
"The question to ask is whether those people will no longer be providing services that are actually going to be contributing positively towards service delivery, or whether they were actually just a waste to the province and to the provincial taxpayers."
READ: Ntuli: Massive budget cuts needed to pay off debt
Jammine says various factors led the province to the current situation.
"A lot of money was spent on other things, and once suspects that some of those things may be corrupt practices in which awarding tenders for the provision of services that were never subsequently rendered and instead the money went into some people’s pockets."
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