Water & Enviromental Affairs Portfolio Committee Report adoption

Meeting report

Adoption of Minutes
The Committee considered and adopted the draft minutes of a previous meeting held in conjunction with the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Farming and Fishing. In addition, Members made a minor correction to the minutes dated 23 June 2009 and thereafter adopted it. In addition, the Committee adopted the drafted minutes after correcting a minor error

Adoption of Committee Reports
Members considered and adopted all three Committee Reports. The Committee was impressed with the quality of the reports and no objections were raised with regards to content. As a consequence, all three reports were approved without amendments. 

Adoption of Draft Committee Programme
The Chairperson requested Members to consider the programme and to offer any comments on it.

Mr G Morgan (DA) stressed that only competent persons and those in authority should appear before the Committee, noting that certain officials were often unable to respond to questions.

Ms S Dawood, Parliamentary Resarcher, referred Members to the Orientation Report, which contained a litany of issues for the Committee to consider. She requested that members go through the report and add to it where necessary. She also advised that the agenda be flexible to cater for any urgent matter that might arise.

Mr Morgan requested flexibility in the holding of the meetings, as Members had other meetings to attend to, and this was especially pertinent as two ministries had been merged earlier this year. 

The Chairperson recommended that the programme should not be “cast in stone” and could be changed if necessary.

Accordingly, the programme was adopted on the understanding that it was subject to change.

Miscellaneous Matters
The Chairperson noted that the Committee had received an invitation to attend a climate change conference in Denmark. She noted that payments would need to be taken from the Committee’s own budget to upgrade the attending members to business class seats. Lastly, she mentioned that the names of the ANC members who would be attending had already been decided on and that the names of Ms H Ndude (Cope) and Mr Morgan had been tentatively added, noting that the latter had attended a previous conference held by the same organisers.

Mr Skosana asked when the fisheries department would respond to query raised in a previous meeting.

The Chairperson replied that they were still waiting for the principals to respond.

The meeting was adjourned.