Committee Report on Department of Public Works 2011 Strategic Plan and Budget

Meeting report

The Chairperson noted she had reminded Members in their last meeting that they should go through the report and asked them to engage with the report in terms of corrections and suggestions.

Ms N Madlala (ANC) asked for clarity on page 4 of the report under point 2.4 and 2.5 which dealt with the mandate of the Department of the Military Veterans. She stated that it was difficult for her to understand what the sentence was conveying where it was said “The Department should be responsible for projects and military basis, and installations of the Department of Defence and Military Veterans”.

The Chairperson asked the Committee Secretary to respond to the question posed by Ms Madlala.

Ms Akhona Busakwe, Committee Secretary, responded that the Department of Public Works was responsible for the ramp programme which had the lease and all amenities in the Department of Defence and Military Veterans and she would expand on that in the final report.

Mr L Gaehler (UDM) stated that he had not had a chance to look at the strategic plan of the Department but last week he attended a joint meeting with the Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services and in that meeting there were discussions on the Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects. He was therefore not sure if that was discussed in the strategic plan of the Department but there was agreement in that joint meeting between the Department and Correctional Services about the PPP projects. If the agreement was not in the strategic plan of the Department Members should get more information on the matter from the Department because it was very important for the Committee.

The Chairperson agreed with Mr Gaehler that Members should get more information on the matter because she also did not see it in the strategic plan of the Department.

Mr K Sithole (IFP) noted on page 19 of the report under the heading “construction industry” it was stated that the Construction Industrial Development Board (CIDB) was a Schedule 3 public entity and its mandate was to provide leadership to stakeholders and to stimulate sustainable growth in. He suggested that “in” should be taken out from the sentence.

Ms C Madlopha (ANC) asked for clarity in terms where it was stated in the report that the CIDB was a Schedule 3 entity because according to her understanding nothing has changed; it was still a Schedule 3 public entity. She also asked for clarity on the construction register 6204 where it was mentioned in the report that the programme was responsible for maintaining the national register because the programme was still responsible for that purpose.

The Committee Secretary explained that the CIDB was a Schedule 2 entity and its main objective was to provide leadership to stakeholders and emulate sustainable growth in and perform an improvement of the construction sector.

The Chairperson clarified that the sentence was supposed to read that the CIDB was responsible for providing leadership to stakeholders and to emulate growth in the construction sector. She stated that Members were dealing with the entities in page 20 of the report.

Mr M Rabotapi (DA) noted that the grammar of the report was phrased in the past tense but rather it should be phrased in the present tense because it talked to what the Department intended to do currently.

Ms P Ngwenya-Mabila (ANC) noted that it was stated in the report that the Chief financial Officer (CFO) should ensure that ‘Operation Re Yabatala’ had no late payments of service providers. She stated that the sentence in the report should be cancelled and rather one should put a sentence which said the CFO should ensure that the Department adhered to the Re Yabatala principles.

Ms Madlopha asked for clarity in terms of the sentences in bullet point 10.1.9 on page 22 of the report where it was stated, under the Chief Director, that policy should look into amendments of the Parliamentary Village Board Act as a function of the Board. This had direct consequences for Members of Parliament who stayed in the Parliamentary Villages. Then there was another sentence which she was not sure was a separate sentence which said all other outstanding legislation should also be introduced in Parliament before the end of the current financial year. She asked whether the two sentences were the same sentence or separate.

The Chairperson responded that the sentences were separate.

Ms Ngwenya-Mabila agreed that the sentences should be separated and all other outstanding legislation should be introduced in Parliament.

Mr Sithole also asked for clarity in terms of bullet point 10.1.10 on page 22 of the report where it was stated that the Director-General (DG) should formulate a mechanism to check performance. He asked if it was one mechanism that was required from the DG.

The Chairperson stated that she also wanted to challenge that point on whether it was the DG that needed to formulate the mechanism or if it should be Treasury. She thought that Treasury was the one who should come up with the mechanisms of making sure that all entities’ performance was checked.

Ms Madlopha stated that the DG should look at not only one mechanism but rather at different mechanisms that could check all the different entities’ performance. Therefore the DG could not come up with one mechanism for all the different entities of the Department but rather come up with mechanisms for the different entities.

The Chairperson needed clarity as to who should determine the salaries of the executives of entities and asked the Committee Secretary to look at the matter.

Ms Madlopha stated that they should say that the DG in conjunction with the Treasury should determine the salaries of executives of entities.

The Chairperson asked Members to discuss the issue of eradication of mud schools by the Independent Development Trust (IDT). The IDT got its mandate from the Department of Public Works and the Department was requested by the Department of Basic Education to build schools on its behalf. Therefore they were, in a way, taking the blame when they were saying the Department of Public Works was not building schools; this was not correct. The Department of Public Works did not build schools if it was not mandated by the Department of Basic Education because the budget of building schools was with the Department of Basic Education. They therefore needed to reformulate the sentence in the report and not took blame which was not there in the first place. If the Department of Basic Education identified another entity to build a school for it there was nothing the Department of Public Works or IDT could do to change that situation.

Mr Gaehler agreed with the Chairperson that the Department of Public Works was mandated to ensure that governmental infrastructure was built and maintained by the Department, but, because of shortage of skills, other departments outsourced infrastructure from other private entities. The truth of the matter was that any government department should first come to the Department of Public Works for its infrastructure development.

Mr Rabotabi agreed with Mr Gaehler by stating that Basic Education should identify all the schools it wanted to build and for Public Works to do the actual building.

The Chairperson asked Members to go back and look at page 4 in bullet point 2.5.4 of the report where it was stated that the Minister requested the Committee to assist the Department in reclaim the Department’s mandate of building infrastructure for client departments to enable them to focus on their specific mandates. She emphasised that this related to the mandate of the Department of Public Works.

Ms Ngwenya-Mabila noted in bullet point 10.2.1 on page 26 of the report that the issue of the investigation report of Price Water Coopers was not part of the strategic plan. Members should delete it, because it came through as a result of a petition and it should still come before the Committee for discussion. And under 10.1, 10.3, 10.4 and 10.5 she thought the Committee had one recommendation and Members should delete the others.

The Chairperson informed the Committee that the Committee Secretary had indicated that she was hoping to get more recommendations from Members of the Committee.

Ms Ngwenya-Mabila noted also that in bullet point 10.4 on page 17 indicated there was a Bill which needed to be fast tracked by the Committee – the Agrément South Africa Bill.

Ms N Ngcengwane (ANC) also agreed and noted that on pages 16 and 17 she was concerned that they should prioritise the Agrément South Africa Bill over the Council for Built Environment (CBE) Bill, because the review of the Built Environment Profession would be completed and presented to the Minister in the 2011/12 financial year. Members had been saying to the Minister and the Department that if they were really serious about skills development in the country they would not delay the Bill. It was very sad because some of the engineers of the country were crying out to the ANC-led Government to assist them. The Government Immovable Asset Management Act (GIAMA) Bill would be tabled in Parliament in 2012 and be approved by 2013/14 financial year. She was worried that people would continue looting Government assets. She was very sorry to say that, but it was a serious reality.

The Chairperson related a story of hers to the Committee. She had met a young South African girl at the airport who specialised in the purification of water and was going to work in Angola because she could not find employment in South Africa. Those were the people the Committee Members were talking about because some of the things needed to be unlocked, and if they did not unlock them, as with the Council for Built Environment, they should forget it. They were saying if Public Works did not recruit engineers, artisans, etc, there would be a lot of specialised skills leaving the country and there was no way they could talk of Government delivery if the young people with skills capacity were sitting at home doing nothing. They therefore should come up with a beautiful sentence which stated that the Department needed to unlock the potential which was doing nothing sitting at home with those certificates.

Mr Gaehler suggested that the Department needed to involve other departments in finding out the number of graduate students per year which came out of its training programmes who had been employed and who were not yet employed. The Department also needed a buy in from the Department of Higher Education and Training and other departments because some of the qualified students were sitting at home with their certificates gathering dust. It was therefore very crucial that the Department had that kind of data so that they would be able to identify and recruit that potential to the Department.

The Chairperson noted that in the engagement wit the DG, the Department indicated that there were Universities which were registered and those which were not and the Department recruited the students based on the tertiary institution they attended and which was accredited. Therefore there was a need for Government to scrutinise all the tertiary institutions in the country because some students were victims of institutions which were not accredited.

Ms Madlopha agreed with the Chairperson and stated that there was still a pool of disillusioned students that enrolled at tertiary institutions that were not accredited before and which were later accredited, and those students needed to be assisted by Government. Around the issue of gathering data, the Minister of Public Works had made a call to all the students with technical skills to come forward and Members had received a report that stated that plus or minus 9 000 young people had come forward with their CVs. The Department should also cooperate with other departments because the Department of Public Works was looking for technical qualifications and the other departments had a wide scope.

Mr Rabotapi noted that the Department was also giving priority to retired engineers and that was the problem because priority needed to be given to young engineers as opposed to the retired. He thought that the demand was more than the supply in the engineering sector because if the Department called everybody it would be sitting with the problem again.

The Chairperson assured Mr Rabotapi that the retired engineers were called in order to transfer skills to the younger generation.

Mr Gaehler stated that he agreed with Mr Rabotapi because the call was there but it did reach the rural communities. He suggested that Members should take the matter up with the Minister because, if she could not reach the rural communities, Members should be able to pursue the matter through their constituencies.

Ms N November (ANC) asked if whether the point on CBE had been included in the report as alluded to earlier by Ms Ngcengwane.

The Chairperson agreed that the CBE would be put in the report. She asked Members if they agreed that all that they had discussed should be in the report of the Committee.

Ms Madlopha asked if the Committee had the right to ask whether the CBE Bill could be reviewed in its timeframe so that it could be finalised earlier than 2014 taking into account the challenges of transformation around the issue of technical skills.  

The Chairperson responded that, if she was not mistaken, the Department was requested to submit its bills at a specific time for the bills to be scrutinised in the current financial year. And she did not know if the CBE Bill would not be too late for the current financial year.

Mr Gaehler moved for the adoption of the report.

Mr Rabotabi seconded the move.

The Chairperson asked Members if they were satisfied with the introduction and the conclusion of the report.

Ms Ngcwengane confirmed that they were satisfied but they should not only fast track the CBE Bill but also the GIAMA Bill.

Mr Rabotabi noted that in future Members should request the Department to submit its reports on time because tomorrow Members would be debating and they would be contradicting what they already agreed upon in the Committee as a result of the late plans of the Department.

Other Matters
The Chairperson assured Mr Rabotabi that a letter was written to the Chair of Committees and was forwarded to the Speaker after Members were thinking about the late tabling of the report. She urged Members to go and have a good debate in Parliament so as to represent their constituencies in a proper manner. She also informed Members that on 07 June 2011 they will meet with the IDT in terms of a Petition that was received by the Committee and Members would receive a copy from the Committee Secretary to study because they would be expecting IDT to respond to the allegations; it was to be noted especially that the petitioners had approached the Chairperson’s secretary to say they would like to add other things because what was on the petition was not complete and they had a serious problem with the funds that were allocated to IDT.

Ms Ngwenya-Mabila noted that she and Ms November would not be available for the meeting of 07 June with the IDT because they would be attending a Rural Development and Land Reform Portfolio Committee meeting on that day.

The Chairperson also announced that on 25 -29 July the Committee would have an oversight visit to the Eastern Cape, and from 01 to 05 August Members would be visiting the Northern Cape. The Committee was also seeking permission to go on a study tour of India and Canada from 28 November – 09 December 2011.

The meeting was adjourned.