Cape Town – The passing of the Division of Revenue Amendment Bill of 2016, which was introduced to pave way for the National Treasury to allocate funds to urgent and unavoidable service delivery interventions, was stalled after Members of Parliament in the National Assembly did not meet the quorum.
The Bill makes a provision to changes in the equitable division of nationally raised revenue among all spheres of government - including adjustments to provincial allocations, adjustments to local government allocations as well as changes to conditional grant frameworks.
Prior to the vote, several MPs walked out of the National Assembly chamber.
After a vote, 192 MPs voted in favour of the Bill and five voted against it, while zero abstained. This brought the number of MPs who voted to 197.
To meet the quorum, 202 MPs should participate in a vote.
Speaker Baleka Mbete said due to this, the Bill would return to the House another day.
During the debate on the Bill, the Deputy Minister Mcebisi Jonas said the Bill merely makes a provision for urgent expenditure items without altering government’s policy direction as set out in the 2016 budget.
“It makes small amendments to the Division of Revenue Act that was adopted by this House earlier this year to provide for unforeseeable and unavoidable expenditure, emergencies, roll-overs of unspent funds and shift of funds to respond to urgent needs and circumstances,” he said.
The Deputy Minister said government remained committed to fiscal consolidation that the National Treasury announced in the medium-term budget.
The Bill, which Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan tabled alongside the mid-term budget last month, makes provision for adjustments to be made for several areas of spending. This includes:
• An amount of R9 million to be added to the direct national health insurance grant to fund the strengthening of health information systems in KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape. This is an important part of piloting the diagnostic related groups as part of the National Health Insurance;
• An amount of R212 million to be added to a new indirect component of the comprehensive agriculture support programme to enable the national Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries to provide relief to farmers affected by the ongoing drought;
• An amount of R177.1 million allocated to the education infrastructure grant for the rehabilitation of damaged school infrastructure. The funds will also be used to provide mobile classrooms while damaged school infrastructure is being rehabilitated;
• An amount of R53.6 million added to the national school nutrition programme grant, in order to cover the shortfall caused by high food price inflation; and
• R142.5 million of the indirect school infrastructure backlogs grant, will be converted to the direct education infrastructure grant allocation for the Western Cape. The same projects that were previously funded through the indirect grant will now be implemented by the Western Cape provincial Education Department.
Further areas of spending include a R50.6 million increase for the indirect water services infrastructure grant in 2016/17 to fund the provision of emergency water supplies to drought affected communities. The support provided includes water tankers providing water to communities and the provision of storage tanks that can be filled by water tankers.
Another increase of R72 million was to be made for the bucket eradication programme grant to allow the Department of Water and Sanitation to complete bucket eradication projects that the department had already identified and committed to implementing.
ANC Chief Whip Jackson Mthembu raised his concern with the Speaker that at the time of voting, three EFF members were present in the chamber but did not participate in the vote. He also said that MP Yunus Carrim’s vote was not recorded due to a system glitch.
He said had those votes, including that of the Speaker, been counted, the National would have met a quorum.
The Speaker promised to look into his concerns. – SAnews.gov.za
