Question NW209 to the Minister in the Presidency

Reply:

1. Yes, the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) allocated funding from existing grants within the department in support of service delivery programmes as well as to augment the resources made available by affected organs of state from their own resources on the efforts to combat the spread of covid-19 pandemic. The details of the disaster management funded initiatives for the augmentation of the response capacity to the COVID-19 pandemic in each province and the costs thereof since 25 March 2021 are as follows:

An amount of R466 392 000 (R466.4 million) from the Provincial Disaster Relief Grant was transferred in March 2020 to the Departments of Health in all provinces primarily for the procurement of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Ventilators.

Table 1: funding allocation to Provincial Departments of Health for Covid-19 response measures: Provincial Disaster Relief Grant- 2019/2020 FY

No.	Province	Amounts allocated to Provincial Departments of Health
	Eastern Cape	R 44 551 000
	Free State	R 12 429 000
	Gauteng	R115 996 000
	KwaZulu-Natal	R138 918 000
	Limpopo	R 42 449 000
	Mpumalanga	R 33 993 000
	Northern Cape	R 6 224 000
	North West	R 18 540 000
	Western Cape	R 53 292 000
	Total	R466 392 000

An amount of R150 970 000 (R151 million) from the Municipal Disaster Relief Grant was transferred in May 2020 to 246 municipalities in all provinces primarily for Covid-19 response measures. The priority areas for allocated funding were (i) Sanitation, (ii) Waste Management, (iii) Decontamination of specific selected public spaces, (iv) Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and (v) Hygiene packs.

Table 2: funding allocation to 246 municipalities in all provinces for Covid-19 response measures: Municipal Disaster Relief Grant- 2020/2021 FY

No.	Province	No. of municipalities funded	Amounts allocated to local municipalities within respective provinces
	Eastern Cape	37	R42 787 000
	Free State	22	R 8 610 000
	Gauteng	8	R 5 276 000
	KwaZulu-Natal	53	R47 499 000
	Mpumalanga	17	R 9 596 000
	Limpopo	27	R14 579 000
	Northern Cape	31	R 3 137 000
	North West	22	R11 559 000
	Western Cape	29	R 7 927 000
	Total	246	R150 970 000

In May 2020, The National Treasury has given the Department of Cooperative Governance approval for municipalities to reprioritise their 2019/20 Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) allocations, for urgent repairs to water and sanitation infrastructure, to improve their functionality in reliable delivery of basic services. A total of 335 projects were reprioritised to the value of R1.6 billion, with 187 projects under construction and 51 completed to date (See attached document for provincial details).

The reprioritisation by municipalities in 2020/21 financial year has been very low, with only 109 projects registered for implementation. The approval granted by the National Treasury in July 2020 indicated that of municipal MIG allocations can be reprioritised for urgent repairs to water and sanitation infrastructure to improve functionality of infrastructure, and a further 10% for sanitisation of public transport facilities, which includes repairs to municipal owned quarantine sites. The total value of these projects, as per municipal

applications, is R474, 595,236. A total of 50 projects are currently under implementation and 9 are completed to date (See table below for provincial details).

 

 

In terms of sub-question:

a) Cabinet.

b) The National Corona-Virus Command Council (NCCC) receives reports from the NATJOINTS and the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MACs). It considers the reports and deliberates on the required regulations and formulates a recommendation to Cabinet.

c) The following factors, amongst others, play a key role in the determination of the regulations:

(i) the extent of the rate of infection (e.g. number of active cases per 100 000 population, rate of increase / decrease of active cases etc).

(ii) the readiness of the health system to cope with the number of infections (e.g. availability of hospital beds, number of health care workers infected etc.);

(iii) the advice and analysis of the Minster of Health’s Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC), made up of a wide range of science and health experts and the NATJOINTS, made up of the Directors-General of the respective national sector departments.

d) The scientific evidence is quality assured by the MAC against peer reviewed publications of research conducted, where such publication is available.

e) The decisions of Cabinet on the content of the regulations are drafted in the correct layout by legislative drafters, which are legally vetted by the Office of the Chief State Law Adviser, before it is signed by the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs for publication in the Gazette to give it the force of law.

(2)(a) All approved regulations are published in the Government Gazette. Before the publication in the Gazette, where major changes to regulations are to come into effect, often the President addresses the nation on those changes. After the publication in the Gazette, the Minister of COGTA leads media briefings involving other relevant ministers on the contents of Regulations.

(b) Section 34 of the Constitution guarantees the right of access to courts. The courts have remained operational during the declaration of the national state of disaster. To manage the spread of the virus, directions were issued by the

Minister of Justice and Correctional services and directives were issues by Heads of Courts.

Thank you.