Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations has written to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to seek clarity on the cost of hosting the G20 Leaders’ Summit.
The committee chairperson Mmusi Maimane says they have a constitutional obligation to monitor public spending and ensure that it’s done appropriately.
Maimane says South Africa has a history of inflating procurement costs when hosting events of such magnitude.
“At the beginning of the financial year and last year, a question was asked about how much money was set up for the G20 and figures close to about R500 – 600 million were put on the table. So, we want to know if they were able to spend within that envelope or beyond that envelope because the budget pronouncements need to remain integral.The last place you want you want to be as a budgeting process is to pronounce that you are going to spend R600 million on something and then later you come back and say it was over a billion rand.”
<p>He pledged to leverage ICT, predecessors' policies and stakeholder collaboration to solve Nigeria's power challenge.</p>
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LONDON — Britain’s embattled Keir Starmer stared down one leadership rival Thursday lunchtime. Another was banging on his door by nightfall. A putsch to oust…
<img src="https://www.mtlblog.com/media-library/hydro-quebec-workers-restore-power-to-a-montreal-street.jpg?id=55732166&width=1200&height=600&coordinates=0%2C12%2C0%2C12"/><br/><br/><p>As <a href="https://www.mtlblog.com/montreal-weather-january-cold">temperatures plunged from freezing to brutally frigid</a> on Tuesday morning, many Montrealers woke up to find their homes without power.</p><p>On January 21, <a href="https://infopannes.solutions.hydroquebec.com/info-pannes/pannes/bilan-interruptions-service" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hydro-Québec </a>reported that a significant outage started around 6:25 a.m., impacting much of the city. As many as 50,000 were initially affected. As of 9:00 a.m., around 35,000 homes out of a total of 1,036,980 remained without electricity.</p><p>The hardest-hit areas are in the northern part of the island, including the boroughs of Ahuntsic-Cartierville and Villeray–Saint–Michel–Parc–Extension.</p><p>This comes as a polar vortex grips much of North America, with <a href="https://www.mtlblog.com/tag/montreal-weather">Montreal's temperatures</a> dropping to a frigid -15 C on Tuesday morning.</p><p>The ongoing outage is reportedly caused by equipment damage linked to a manufacturing defect, according to Hydro-Québec's <a href="https://infopannes.solutions.hydroquebec.com/info-pannes/pannes/bilan-interruptions-service" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Info-Pannes page</a>. Unfortunately, no timeline has been provided for when power will be restored.</p><p>With the bitter cold posing additional challenges, Hydro-Québec has postponed all planned maintenance outages for January 21 and 22, focusing only on essential and brief interruptions.</p><p>Tuesday is expected to see lows of -18 C with temperatures gradually climbing up throughout the rest of the week. </p><p>In the meantime, people affected should stay as warm as possible, and be sure to check Hydro-Québec's website for updates as more information becomes available.</p><p><em>This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.</em></p><p><em>AI tools may have been used to support the creation or distribution of this content; however, it has been carefully edited and fact-checked by a member of MTL Blog's Editorial team. For more information on our use of AI, please visit our <a href="https://www.mtlblog.com/editorial-standards" target="_blank">Editorial Standards page</a>.</em></p>
