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The state of the Province
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 Road and Public Works

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EASTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

PUT TO THE STATE OF THE PROVINCE ADDRESS

PRESENTATION BY THE MEC FOR ROADS AND PUBLIC WORKS, MR PG MASUALLE

28 JULY 1999



Honourable Speaker,

Colleagues and Honourable Members

It is for me both an honour and a privilege to have been afforded an opportunity to take part in this debate on the provincial address by 
the Honourable Premier.

From the onset, let me add my voice to those commending the Premier for such an incisive exposition of our provincial imperatives.

Perhaps, it should be accepted by now there shall always be those within the midst of our society who will always deliberately pretend deaf 
or blind to the practical reality surrounding them day in and day out. It is indeed a very desperate act of denial. This obnoxious tendency 
is characteristic or resident within our so-called opposition parties without exception.

Like all democrats, the word of the people is like a sacred instruction from higher authority and all that remains for us is to act on that 
mandate. That strategic direction was enunciated here by the Honourable Premier for all of us to follow. From a different perspective, I 
want to agree with Premier when he cautions us against those who are either shunning our history or weary of the very mention of the word, 
history. There is an old adage that says, "A nation that forgets its own history will soon itself be forgotten."

The truth here is that there are those who would so much like us to forget where we come from and thus hopefully distort our vision of 
where we must get to. That we cannot allow. The act of steering society is in itself an act of making history. We must therefore be very 
weary of these liberal connotations of development of society that is without reference.

The Honourble Premier has mapped out the challenges for the next coming five years and in so doing isolated key priority areas action. One 
such area is the development of rural infra-structure with the view ultimately to activate rural economic development. The department of 
Roads and Public Works is pivotal in the provisioning of these essential services.

Given the magnitude of the backlogs and the need for the strategic harnessing of the resources at our disposal at given moments, we have 
already begun championing an integrated approach drawing together various role players in this arena with the view to maximizing impact in 
this domain. These include government departments provincial and national, our counterpart at local government level and the non-government 
sector. The emphasis in this approach is first and foremost, the

* Co-ordination of the strategic deployment of resources.
* Cost effective utilisation of such resources
* Community development for sustaining such assets

As a matter of necessity, our programmes must and will include the labour intensive methods of production as we mist respond to the acute 
problem of joblessness that ravages our province. It is apparent in my view that we need as a matter urgency a re-alignment of focus and 
much more synergy created between the various role players so as to achieve what the President of our country has outlined as integrated 
rural development. To this end, we have already made contact with the National department of Public Works regarding the re-orientation of 
the NPWP and indeed also with regard to the fact that we are identified as a province among the three foremost beneficiaries of the poverty 
alleviation programme.

Honourable Speaker, this is no tine for policy speeches yet, but the temptation to outline vision is at times hard to resist but beyond the 
it is the practical realization of that which is cardinal.

I must conclude Hon. Speaker in the works of both the Premier and the President by saying,

" The people have spoken and we dare not fail."



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