The Western Cape has the fastest-growing economy in South Africa and has attracted R100billion in foreign direct investment under the administration of the DA, Premier Alan Winde said in his State of the Province address this week.
“We have a proven track record in creating jobs. Since the DA was elected in 2009, the province has attracted R100bn in foreign direct investment,” Winde said during the official opening ceremony of the sixth provincial parliament in Cape Town.
“We have generated R1bn in savings for businesses by reducing ‘red tape’ in the Western Cape.”
Cape Town had been named the top financial centre in sub-Saharan Africa and is the events capital of the continent, while tourists bring “billions into our economy”.
In the last decade, the provincial government had created more than 500000 jobs, leaving the Western Cape with the
lowest real unemployment rate in the country, he added.
Since 2009, the provincial
government had spent over R483 million on bursaries, learnerships and internships, providing opportunities for nearly 16000 young people.
Winde also slammed the police for letting gangsters run riot, saying the SAPS had lost the fight against crime because the Western Cape was under-resourced.
“In our oversight of 151 police stations, we discovered that this province has a shortage of 548 detectives, almost half of the detectives in our province have a case load of 200 or more, when the ideal number is between 50 and 60,” he said.
He said only 2% of detectives have had any specialist training: “Seventy-one percent don’t have informers and more than half of our detectives do not even have a firearm.”
African News Agency