Department of Justice Budget: briefing

Meeting report

SECURITY AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS SELECT COMMITTEE
22 MAY 2002
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BUDGET: BRIEFING

Chairperson: Kgoshi Mokoena

Documents handed out
Department of Justice & Constitutional Development Performance Enhancement Programme

SUMMARY
The Department has introduced a new budgeting system called 'zero-base budget' which identifies what could be funded and what could not for purposes of making informed policy decisions and ensuring the implementation of budgeted programmes. The Department was also proposing to out-source the Maintenance pay-out system so that it could reduce its function to monitoring and divest from cumbersome system of handling and disbursing cash.

MINUTES
Presentation by Mr Allan Mackenzie Chief Finance Officer
Mr Mckenzie informed the Committee that the Department was introducing the restructuring of its budget, which he called 'zero-base budget'. The new system offered ample opportunity to policy makers to elect which projects qualify for funding. He singled out the many pieces of legislation lying idle with the government Department due to lack of funding. The new system would go along way to address this recurrent problem.

Mr Mckenzie contended that the new approach to budgetary formulation would be popular among donors because they would clearly see what gets funded in the financial year and what would not. He faulted the current management model, which he said did not match the funding provision. In the new budgetary approach senior officers would be held directly responsible for the implementation of the budget given to facilitate the current system.

Mr Mckenzie decried the fact that the Department's unfunded budget at present exceeded one billion rands a situation which rendered most of the planned programmes unimplementable and that R250 million worth of services would not be delivered this year alone. He lamented the fact that courts overspend on their personnel budget by R190 million which was a great challenge facing the Department since such skewed expenditure ran counter to the core function of the Department which is administration of justice. He said that the opposite was true with the National Prosecuting Office, which had a huge under-spend budget due mainly to the numerous unfilled vacancies and an outstanding purchase regime.

On the proposed amendment to the Maintenance Act, Mr Mckenzie admitted that the Department had not lived up to the expected standards. He said the main reason for the failure in this regard has been the fact that people were not properly trained to administer this facility and that the systems were such that they created a fertile ground for corrupt practices and were also promoting a culture of non-compliance.

Mr Mckenzie said that it was because of the dismal performance in this field that the Department was proposing 'a zero cash handling' so that personnel in this division could be released to concentrate on the core business, which was administration of justice. He said the Department had opted to out-source this item as the best way to effectively deliver this important service to people. There would be no retrenchments as a consequence of the said out-sourcing and that the Department was looking for one simple out-sourcing deal to manage the programme.

Mr Mckenzie said the role of the Department would be reduced to monitoring to ensure the system works. He also pointed out that the new system would take banking deep into the rural areas which meant instead of making many expensive trips in search of their money, beneficiaries would now make only one single trip and that would be to collect their cash. He revealed that the Department had already identified a donor who will help to fast track the implementation process.

Discussion
Mr Mkhaliphi (ANC) thanked the Department for the innovative report but requested that in future documents should be made available to members in advance to enable them to come up with more useful in-put. He asked for an explanation on the Department's ratio between personnel and what was paid out to them in terms of salaries.

Mr Mckenzie replied that it was not his intention to complicate the budget presentation. He explained that the nature of the Justice budget was that it was unfortunately too complicated due to the many needs that were levelled against scarce resources. On the question of percentages he said that R190 million was over-spent on personnel and capital works carried R264 million.

Mr Mkhalipi (ANC) noted that the country has had perennial problems in fighting run-away crime. He then asked why most white collar offences were often thrown out of the court before they go to full hearing and what, if any, specific resources the Department had put in place to address this problem.

Mr Mckenzie noted that the Department had made remarkable in-roads in the fight against crime and pointed out that in the period between January and September 2002 the rate of new cases doubled and that correspondingly guilty verdict soared from 32% to 84%.

Ms Lubidla (ANC) asked how justice was being transformed to arrest the crime situation in the country and if the new maintenance pay-out system was user friendly. She also asked if there had been enough education around the programme to sensitise beneficiaries.

Mr Mckenzie explained that the Department had established the 'Justice Foot Print' system which was a process of analysing the crime statistics in different regions so that it could decide which kind of courts to set up in these areas. He said it had been noted, for instance, that property crimes were very high in the Gauteng whilst sexual offences were on the increase in the Northern Cape. With this intelligence data, appropriate court structures could be set up.

On education Mr Mckenzie said that the maintenance system was a massive project, which would affected millions of South Africans, and that therefore the Department had outlined a programme timetable. This would start with collection of relevant facts, consultation with various stakeholders and experts where there needs to be packaging, concept formulation, project definition and finally education programmes. He said that education programmes called for the most resources.

Mr Maloyi (ANC) said that he was not clear on the question of the Department's priorities and what informed such priorities. Were there any rollovers from the pervious year?

Mr Mckenzie explained that the funded items in the budget were priority areas. The benefit of the new budget system was that it empowered policy designers to make informed choices on what should be funded. He said the budget report clearly showed the rollover item and that the equality item falls in the item of unfounded projects

Mr Maloyi said that the Department had not addressed the role to be played by the Equality Review Committee and why it had been voted in the non-priority items.

Mr Mckenzie replied that the Portfolio Committee voted the Equality Review Committee as a non-priority item in the last year budget hence no funding was allocated to it. He lamented that on the one side the Department was under extreme pressure to introduce legislation but on the other end such legislation fell into disuse for lack of budgetary provision.

Mr Maloyi asked if the Department had consulted the provinces on the new maintenance pay-out systems and what time frames it had in the implementation of the system.

Mr Mckenzie explained that the question of time frames would depend in the first instance if treasury would fund the project and that this would come out by October. Public education and training would take the biggest cost on the project.

Mr Maloyi referred to the revelation in the presentation that there were pieces of legislation that were lying idle and asked why the said legislation was not being implemented.

Mr Mckenzie confirmed that there were indeed several pieces of legislation that have not received funding for implementation to-date. He cited, for example, the Legal Practice Bill, the Customary courts Bill and the Law Committee Bill, as Legislation that had not been implemented for want of budgetary allocation.

Mr Maloyi asked why the Department had computerised 37 stations only and what steps it was taking to sort out this problem. Some people had worked as court volunteers for many years and asked what the Department was doing about this unacceptable situation.

Mr Mckenzie acknowledged the slow progress on computerisation, which he blamed on scarce resources. He said the Department had requested R482 million for the computerisation programme but it had received zero funding so far. He said this had put the computerisation project in a limbo.

Ms Lubidla asked how safe the new maintenance system would be both for the paying agent and the payee.

Mr Mckenzie assured the Committee that the new maintenance pay-out system offered a far more secure environment for the beneficiaries than the current system. He added that the new system would have a huge impact on poverty alleviation and that the system offered little room for corrupt practices and the culture of non-compliance that were a hall-mark of the current system.

Mr Matthee (NNP) asked for a copy of the blue print on the new Maintenance system and said that the Committee felt very strongly about these issues but added that he was pleased with the direction things were taking. Were there specific goals to bring down awaiting trial prisoners? How could this be linked to the budget so as to measure progress in future?

Mr Mckenzie replied that this item fell under the National Prosecuting Office who kept a separate budget but added that from what he had witnessed so far there was clearly a huge drive to bring down the number of this category of prisoners. He gave the example of courts that were sitting on Saturdays and the discretion the courts had to informally differ a prisoner's bail terms downwards to zero.

Mr Matthee (NNP) asked if there were adequate trained personnel since the refrain from the Department had always been that there was a shortage of magistrates and prosecutors. He also wanted to know how the Select Committee could be of assistance in this regard.

Mr Mckenzie admitted that the Department had a huge shortage of personnel and equipment. The Department particularly had insurmountable difficulties in finding qualified black accountants to fill the numerous vacant posts it had from an equity point of view. He said the Committee could urge the government to invest more in training the lower cadre of personnel so as to rapidly build capacity that the Department.

Ms Kgoali (ANC) lamented that conditions in the maintenance courts were appalling and asked what the Department was doing about this.

Mr Mckenzie agreed that the Department's physical facilities were in bad shape and that the Department was unhappy with the work done by the Department of Works hence it had been allocated funds to carry out its own capital works. However, this transition would take some time.

Ms Lubidla (ANC) asked why some court stations had many idle computers without trained people to operate them

Mr Mckenzie replied that the plan was to introduce computers in the first phase then train people to operate them in the second phase. He said that after the computers had been distributed there was no funding allocated to the training that was to cover phase two of the project.

The meeting was adjourned.