Public Works Portfolio Committee: Outstanding Reports & Minutes

Meeting report

Election of Chairperson
Ms Akona Busakwe, Committee Secretary, welcomed Members and informed them that Mr G Oliphant (the former Chairperson) had been discharged and therefore a new Chairperson had to be elected.

Ms K Mabuza (ANC) was elected as the new Chairperson for the committee.

The Chairperson expressed her gratitude and promised to serve the Committee with dedication and selflessly.

Mr M Rabotapi (ANC) conveyed his pleasure at having Ms Mabuza as Chairperson and said that he was grateful to Ms Ngcengwane (who had been the Acting Chairperson) for her unyielding dedication during her period of service.

Ms N Ngcengwane (ANC) said that she was happy and pleased that Ms Mabuza had been elected. She thanked Mr Rabotapi for his kind comments as well as other Members for their support during her period of service to the committee as Acting Chairperson.

Outstanding Reports
The Chairperson said that the Committee would hold an internal debate on the Asset Register of the Department of Public Works Government and any issues pertaining to the topic as this issue had generated a lot of discussion from Members. Furthermore, she queried the process in which the documents presented to the Committee should be adopted.

Mr L Gaehler (UDM) said that Members had had ample opportunity to go through the reports as they had received them about a month ago. He therefore advised that the Committee should only consider whether to approve all the reports with or without amendments. It would take too long to go through each and every page of all 3 reports and correct the spelling mistakes of each. The grammar mistakes, which seemed to be the only problems that Members had with the reports, should be dealt with at a later stage.

Mr C Kekana (ANC) suggested that all the reports should be considered for adoption during the meeting and then have the committee secretary correct the mistakes.

Ms Ngcengwane recalled that she had pleaded with Members to go through the reports on their own so that when the Committee considered these reports the meeting would simply be about correcting the mistakes that had been identified. This would have made the meeting run a lot faster.

The Chairperson said that Members thoughts had been noted for future reference, however due to the fact that some of the Members had not made the time to thoroughly read through the documents and extract the mistakes, the Committee would go through the documents page by page.

The Draft Report of the Oversight Visit to Gauteng 20-24 July 2010 was adopted with amendments.

The Draft Report of the Oversight Visit to North West 26-30 July 2010 was adopted with amendments.

The Draft Report of joint oversight Visit of the Portfolio Committee of Public Works and Portfolio Committee of Correctional Services 4-6 August 2010 was adopted with amendments

Outstanding Minutes
The Chairperson tabled two outstanding minutes for consideration. These were dated 7 September and 14 September 2010. Both were approved no amendments.

The meeting was adjourned.