Outcomes of Western Cape Government Cabinet meeting
21 April 2024
Premier Alan Winde chaired a meeting of the Western Cape Government (WCG) Cabinet on Wednesday, 18 April.
Addressing Cabinet colleagues ahead of the meeting, Premier Winde emphasised the importance of long-term and future planning for the Western Cape to better prepare the province and its residents for – among others – the increasing pressure of climate change.
“The WCG already has long-term plans in place to better manage water use through the 15-year Western Cape Integrated Water Response Plan and to make our province energy secure (the Western Cape Energy Resilience programme). But we must start looking even further into the future, by as much as 100 years. We must get long-term planning right to mitigate the impact of severe weather events, like the intense cut-off low that recently affected large swathes of the Western Cape. “The reality is that we are going to have more and more severe weather events – just in the last 11 months we have experienced 4 major flooding, wind and weather-related events and one of the harshest fire seasons in December and January – on Tuesday, 30 January we had 18 serious fires being managed by our disaster management staff. This is our reality and as a government and a province we must think about how we build resilience for our future in the longer term,” said Premier Winde.
Key matters discussed by Cabinet included: