Eleven things you need to know about the provincial budget speeches

This is some of what we learned: 

1. Stand-alone low-cost housing could become a thing of the past. The Department of Human Settlements intends to focus more on integrated human settlements going forward.
2. The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) will establish a Provincial Fire Brigade this year to help fight often uncontrollable veld fires. The department has also declared a war on leakages largely due to poorly maintained municipal infrastructure.
3. Treasury will remove so-called ghost employees from the government payroll by introducing a biometric-online fingerprint verification system.
4. The provincial government cannot bear the burden of infrastructure delivery alone. Private sector players are needed to fund sustainable infrastructure development.
5. The Office of the Premier is to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate the conditions of people living on farms to identify issues related to the protection of human rights, safety, security of tenure, employment, access to housing and basic services, and working conditions.
6. As much as 60 per cent of Mpumalanga’s children are growing up in households with a per-capita income of less than R650 per month. Read more on the department of social development. 
7. The authorities are on high alert as initiation season has started. Following a number of deaths at these institutions, all such cases will hence be investigated as murder. Read more the Department of Community Safety, Security and Liaison. 
8. South Africa’s maths and science was ranked last in the world by the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology report 2015, but the provincial Department of Education has requested only R20 million of the almost R17 billion budget to address it.
9. Emerging farmers are to receive greater support from the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Land and Environment Affairs.
10. The Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport (DPWRT) faces a constrained budget and extreme skills shortages.
11. The Department of Culture, Sport and Recreation plans to start an international six-day cycle tour on home soil.

• Read more on the Department of Health, Department of Economic Development and Tourism and Legislature here.