During his oversight visit to the Eastern Cape on Wednesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa pointed out that despite progress in many areas in the province, its growth and development is significantly hampered by poor governance, mismanagement of public resources, and corruption, particularly at a municipal level.

Since November last year, the Presidency has undertaken oversight engagements in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, with Ramaphosa saying he hopes to conclude the first round of visits to all the provinces in the next few months.

During a meeting with the Eastern Cape Provincial Council, Ramaphosa cited the Auditor-General’s 2023-2024 Consolidated General report which noted improvements and called out irregularities that impeded the province’s growth.

Since the end of the previous Provincial Administration’s term, the report notes stable leadership has strengthened oversight, increasing the number of departments with clean audits from five to nine.

Submission of good-quality financial statements improved from 62% of departments at the start of the Administration to 76% in 2023-24 owing to proactive support by the Provincial Treasury.

“At the same time, the report noted that the Eastern Cape had the highest number of material irregularities of all provinces, which resulted in an estimated financial loss of R197-million,” Ramaphosa said.

Out of the 30 material irregularities identified, 13 remained unresolved at the time of reporting.

“Not only must we pay attention to how well public funds are managed. We also need to pay attention to how these funds are used,” he said.

The Auditor-General also revealed that the Education Department did not achieve 80% of its targets for public ordinary schools and infrastructure delivery performance indicators, while the Health Department did not achieve 54 of its district health services performance indicators.

“While there is much that can be learnt from these and other statistics, the true measure of progress are the changes brought about in the lives of the people of this province. We must be concerned when we see the collapse of services and the deterioration of infrastructure in our metros, cities and towns,” Ramaphosa said.

He berated the fact that pensioners are forced to cross raging rivers in drums because there are no bridges, and sick patients must lie on the floors of hospitals because there are no beds.

“The extent of these and other challenges means that we need to make critical decisions about resource allocation and spending in a difficult economic climate. We are called upon to drive inclusive growth and job creation within an ever more volatile global economy,” Ramaphosa said.