National Youth Development Agency & Centre for Public Service Innovation on their 1st quarter 2015/16 performance

Meeting report

Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI)

Ms Thuli Radebe, Chief Executive Officer (CEO): Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI), said the Auditor General’s opinion was that the performance information set out in the annual performance report for 2014/2015 was useful and reliable in all material respects. 87% of the performance targets had been reached, and 13% not achieved or only partially achieved. The targets were defined under three programmes -- solution support and incubation, research and development, and enabling environment. Solution support and incubation had been the only programme that had two outstanding targets. The tele-radiography project had been initialised at Helen Joseph Hospital, but was still to be initialised at Tshepo-Themba Hospital. The Ligbron E-learning Project had been delayed due to a lack of resources. Sponsorship had since been secured and it was anticipated to be done in the second quarter of 2015/2016. One prototype of the integrated policing nerve centre had not been tested. The retirement of the project manager at SAPS had resulted in the project being delayed. The CPSI was engaged in follow-ups with the Minister of Police and other stakeholders.

An overview of the first quarter performance revealed that 68% of the first quarter targets had been achieved. 21% of the targets were partially complete and 11% were not achieved.

Administration sub-programmes -- Strategic Management, Corporate Resources Management, and Office of the Chief Financial Officer – had all reached their first quarter targets. The Public Sector Innovation programme had achieved its targets in Research and Development (case study development), Solution Support and Incubation (replication of innovative models and solutions and project identification, assessment and risk analysis through internal review process) and Enabling Environment (Public Sector Innovation Awards programme, collaboration and conceptualisation of conference programme, content development of volume 6 issue 1 of “Ideas That Work: The South African Public Sector Innovation Journal”, uploads to the United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN) portal, and hosting the UNPAN Southern African Development Community workshop).

Ms Radebe described the challenges that had resulted in the following sub-programmes not achieving or only partially achieving their targets. Under the Research and Development, identification of challenges for targeted solutions, only one investigation had been initiated into the rat infestation in cities and informal settlements. Capacity for the project had been reassigned to another project. Conclusion of the development of solutions for challenges posted in 2014/2015 had not been completed, as capacity had been reassigned. Under Solution Support and Incubation, the energy cost savings of hospitals through technical and behavioural interventions had partially been achieved. The donor funding had recently been received. Stakeholder engagement and risk analysis had not been done, but project planning had been done. The CPSI had targeted at least 75 visitors to the Multi-Media Innovation Centre, but only 29 officials had visited. A vigorous marketing campaign would be initiated to address the missed target. The Enabling Environment sub-programme had aimed to participate in the UN Public Services Innovation forum, but it had been postponed to November. One of two workshops on Leading Innovation in Public Services had been held -- the second would be held in the second quarter.

Ms Annette Snyman, Chief Financial Officer (CFO): CPSI, presented on the human resources and financial reports. Under the Administration programme they had 15 posts, and 20 posts under the Innovation programme. Of these posts, 11 were permanent in Administration and 12 in Innovation. There were three vacancies in Administration, and one in Innovation. In addition, there was one post in programme 1 and four in programme 2 that were funded by the Canadian General Budget Support Fund for three years. Four of the additional posts were filled. There was also one official assigned to the CPSI from the office of the Minister for a determined period. The was one vacant posts in Corporate Resource Management, two in the office of the Chief Financial Officer and one in Research and Development, for which interviews were under way. She anticipated that the posts would be filled in October. At the Senior Management Service (SMS) level there was only one post, and it was in the process of being abolished due to financial constraints.

The expenditure for the first quarter had amounted to R5.129 million, or 17.68% of the total R29.003 million annual budget. Of the R14 million administration programme budget allocation, R1.8 million had been spent. This had been less than anticipated due to posts that had not been filled. Verification of candidate details was taking longer than expected. Another reason for under-spending had been the delay from the Department of Public Works in securing additional accommodation for the additional staff. It was hoped this would be resolved in the next few months. The Innovation programme expenditure was on target. Expenditure per economic classification showed that compensation of employees came to R3 307 million, goods and services were R1 806 million, and transfers and subsidies had totalled R17 000.

Discussion

The Chairperson enquired about the total budget and asked how they planned to rectify the 13% of targets that had not been met from the previous financial year. She was concerned that the CPSI projects were not service delivery orientated, and therefore not effective. The Committee had recently come from oversight visits and found that people were still subjected to unbearable and unjustified long queues in hospitals. They were going in the early morning with the hope of being quick, but received assistance only in the evening. Some patients had routine appointments and check-ups, but had to wait for three hours to get their file extracted, and then queue for consultation again. The Committee found this to be a common practice in the hospitals that they had visited. She believed it was a matter that one of the Public Service Innovation award winners could deal with. It was evident that there was no correlation and communication between departments. She would like them to improve the system and perhaps change to an electronic system. It was achievable, and it was time the people received the decent service they deserved. With simple intervention from one of the Committee members, the queue had disappeared. She would like CPSI to be visible where service delivery was concerned.

The Chairperson requested an organogram for the vacant posts to be able to clearly see the missing posts -- how they were related to service delivery and how they complemented the work of the organisation. She also questioned the need for the nine vacant posts, and asked how they would improve the Centre’s services. She said they should not recruit people without accommodation. They needed to be ready for new recruits so that they understood the culture of working upon their arrival. There should also be better planning with the Department of Public Works.

Mr A van der Westhuizen (DA) asked how CPSI prioritised their projects. He highlighted queue management as one of the most widespread service delivery challenges. A graphical analysis of each clinic’s appointments could give patients the option of coming during times when the staff was not under a lot of pressure. He also believed that with the strides made in the field of logistics, there should be a solution to the delivery of medication to the public.

He referred to the issue of electronic document management in the public service. It was common for Parliamentarians to trip over piles of paper work filling passages and offices when they did oversight visits, and it was demoralising to the employees.

He highlighted the copper theft challenge. Even though some said it was a policing problem, he asked if there were no good practices of design, like covering the copper cable with concrete, for example. He saw a lack of innovative projects, and wanted to know what the CPSI was doing to find good practices.

The biggest challenge that was missing from the work of the CPSI was the huge unemployment problem in the country, especially amongst the youth. He said there must be many labour intensive projects that the CPSI could champion. The government needed to give people work, and could tackle this problem with projects at the local municipality level. He found it disturbing that the CPSI focused only on high flying information communication technology (ICT) projects that did not dirty their hands. He cautioned that innovation was not only in technology. Lastly, he asked what the criteria were to identify service delivery challenges, and whether the Ligbron e-learning project and the transfer of x-rays over the internet were really the ones in highest demand in the country right now.

Ms P van Damme (DA) recalled that the Western Cape had implemented a triage system improvement as a queue management solution. She would provide details at a later stage, and believed that politics should not get in the way of sharing ideas. Regarding the target of five case studies for service delivery innovation, she asked what other cases, if any, had been identified.

Mr M Ntombela (ANC) had a follow-up question on queue management. He wanted to know if anything was being done about queue marshals, and if so, whether the way they did their job was being checked. He expected clients to be comfortable while they waited.

He spoke of the rat infestation problem in Soweto, where owls had been used as a solution. He knew that the people of Soweto were obsessed with witchcraft and that they had killed most of the owls because they associated them with witchcraft. He asked what the organisation did after they had implemented a solution. He had noticed that capacity re-allocation from one project to another had been listed, and asked why these transfers happened.

Ms Z Dlamini-Dubazana (ANC) said that engagement with the Committee assisted departments to know that they were on the right track. The most important key performance area was research and development on service delivery. The Committee supported the view that the CPSI should be given more money, as their unit played a role in getting accurate information to identify problems. She said the CPSI was shifting from their focus.

Referring to the case studies on service delivery, she said she expected the CPSI to say that they had gone through the Batho Pele principles and identified that the objectives were not being achieved. As an example, she had asked a hospital CEO on an oversight visit what Batho Pele principles were, and he did not know. She said their research must guide the Committee on whether what the President said was being implemented, and what should be improved on. She expected them to look at the effectiveness and shortcomings of existing policies. She believed that the capacity reshuffling was due to non-planning and losing focus.

She reminded the Department that the government had undertaken to avoid duplication of projects, and wanted to know how the Memeza Community Alarm Solution was different to whistle blowers and the Presidential Hotline.

Lastly, she said that if the Centre refocused on innovative projects that were aimed at service delivery, they would discover that they did not have enough money. She reiterated the Chairperson’s suggestion to move to a digital system. She suggested that the CFO needed to learn how to prioritise budgets and to assist the CEO.

Ms R Lesoma (ANC) suggested that the CPSI should take the issues raised by the Committee and make sure they found expression in the next presentation. She reminded them that e-government had been raised at the last meeting. Smart cards had been reported on, but they had not done anything else since.

She also recalled that it had been recommended that the Committee be invited to the entity’s strategic planning workshop, and an invitation had never been received. Some responsibilities had a spill-over effect with other entities, and having the Committee there could assist in identifying what other departments were struggling with in their service delivery implementation plans. She asked that they describe the critical areas that justified the request for more funds.

Ms Lesoma also asked that the CPSI show the value for money derived from conferences and award recipients when they reported back in three months’ time. What more had the recipients done to upscale their creativity? She wanted them to focus on the departments which the Committee had prioritised. Lastly, she encouraged the use of technology that would reduce costs and be effective in queue management solutions.

CPSI’s response

Ms Radebe thanked the Members for the issues they had raised, and started by addressing the Research and Policy analysis concerns. She said that the CPSI had a Research and Development (R&D) unit within the context of innovation. The organisation was challenge driven. Departments brought challenges or the CPSI identified challenges related to service delivery, the R&D unit then addressed the root causes and came up with innovations. The Department of Public Services and Administration (DPSA) had a research and policy analysis branch bigger than the CPSI’s. To avoid duplication of functions, it had been decided with the Minister that the CPSI would have access to documents from the DPSA to inform them, and they would respond to issues raised from there. Research and policy analysis was mainly a DPSA mandate.

Ms Dlamini-Dubazana (ANC) said this meant there was a serious problem with inter-ministerial policies. All departments had research units, and the CPSI had to come up with systems from the research submitted by each department. She was noticing confusion.

Ms Radebe said that when departments came up with issues of policies not working, the CPIS investigated for innovative solutions to the problem. They also picked up challenges and verified them with the departments. She gave an example of partially blind teachers who were being used as clerks instead of teaching, and the CPIS had intervened to ensure that they had equipment to teach and access to Braille versions of curriculums.

Ms Dlamini-Dubazana defined innovation as a new idea or device, and where effective, a process. She said the Committee was not getting the creativity that ensured effective and efficient service delivery from the CPSI. The vision that the Committee had did not match what the organisation was doing with the money allocated. The Committee wanted to see processes that talked to the challenges faced by departments.

Ms Lesoma suggested that the Department of Science and Technology could assist, especially with their association with young people.

Ms Radebe replied that they worked with all departments, including ICT. She agreed that IT was not an innovation, but it was a great enabler. They partnered with the Department of Science and Technology to assist the move from a needs basis to a solutions basis.

She responded to the concerns of long queues. She said the Kaizen system had been adopted as the solution, and was shared among many hospitals. The system had solved queue issues within two days at the tested hospitals. What had been found was that sometimes it was not innovation that was lacking, but the challenge of scaling up. At the current conference, they had brought together seven hospital HOD’s with the aim of them learning from one another. She said the CPSI needed the Department of Health to buy into the solutions.

The solution to the medicine distribution issue had been found through a young man who had started a company where he delivered medication on a bicycle. The CPSI was also replicating the Helen Josephs hospital’s medicine dispensing vending unit at Maponya mall, which allowed patients to get medication with their ID. They were doing it in partnership with the Department of Health, which was currently exhibiting at their conference. She said that when the CPSI came up with solutions, they needed political support. The new Minister had spoken of forcing the health sector to adopt solutions.

She believed that the CPSI were not struggling to spend their allocated money, as they had spent R7 million of their R29 million in the first three months.

Ms Radebe said that the nine vacant posts were not permanent posts, but temporary posts that the National Treasury had assigned to help with projects. The Memeza Community Alarm system was to shorten the police response time for rape incidents and such crimes. It was not a whistle blowing channel. They had received good feedback from it.

To address unemployment, the CPSI were in partnership with the Innovation Hub, to identify young entrepreneurs who were being developed at the hub. It also ran projects such as the Inland Water Safety projects, in partnership with the Department of Environmental Affairs, the Department of Transport and several others. The departments sat together and aligned their mandates, which contributed to Operation Phakisa. The project had developed wash bays to clear boats from dragging in invasive plants that blocked dams and cost departments millions to unblock. This had created jobs at the more than 300 dams’ wash bays. This illustrated that the CPSI worked with departments to save money and create employment. She gave an example of a non-ICT project in the form of cultured gardens that fed schools and old age homes. These gardens created employment, food and therapy for physiotherapy patients. The Ligbron project had connected impoverished schools via wireless to equipped schools, to receive live-time lessons from them. The impact had been phenomenal and the project was being replicated across the provinces. All of these ideas had come from the awards held by the CPSI.

Mr Ntombela said he was worried that the focus seemed to be on big municipalities. He asked if they could pilot in rural smaller areas and how they could ensure that benefits from the bigger areas cascaded down to the rural areas.

The Chairperson asked if they visited service delivery points like schools and hospitals, and how often.

Ms Van Damme said that Ms Dlamini-Dubazana’s question had not been answered properly. She asked for an explanation on how the Centre provided innovative solutions to problems, and the processes that they go through to come up with solutions. For example, with the rat infestation problem, bringing in owls had not been a well researched solution because of the community beliefs.

Ms Radebe explained the model. She said when a service delivery challenge, either brought by a department or unearthed by the CPSI, was realised, they put together a multi-stakeholder expert team. The service delivery business owner remained important. They brought in the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) if it was an ICT project, and found funding to pilot it, because they could not use public funds for pilot projects due to the risk involved. Private companies were approached for funding for testing, and then the CPSI investigated solutions. They started by looking to see if existing solutions were there, and then implemented them. They had found five different solutions to the rat problem in Alexandra township that had not quite worked.

She said the Ligbron project was being taken to the Eastern Cape, and they were engaging with the community.

Lastly, she responded that the Centre was providing solutions to the rural areas, and also finding some of their best innovations in those areas.

Mr Lindani Mthethwa, Head of Solution, Support and Incubation, said their main challenge was in scaling up the projects. He clarified that they did not deliver services, but gave solutions. They had found solutions to the queue management problem and tested them, so the solutions existed. Answering the Chairperson’s question, he said that they did visit the service delivery points on the basis of finding solutions. Their target was to focus on government solutions.

Ms Radebe added that they were putting together a ministerial forum to initiate a funding model. The suggestion was to have departments dedicate 1% or 2% of their budgets to innovation so that they each had funding for innovation and there would be no need to run around looking for funding for pilot projects. Ministers Pandor (Science and Techology) and Gigaba (Home Affairs) had been at the conference exploring these ideas. They were also working with the e-government department of the DPSA and the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services, to ensure that e-government was up and running.

Ms Snyman presented the organisational structure to show the vacant posts. Corporate Resource Management had one vacant post, the office of the CFO had two vacant posts, there were two vacancies in Public Service Innovation, one vacancy in Research and Development and one in Enabling Environment. There was also the SMS post that was being abolished. Programme two had another four posts that were donor funded.

The Chairperson said that the recommendations that were made regarding the allocation of resources and prioritisation of projects would be dealt with when the Committee came to the strategy session of the CPSI to assist them.

National Youth Development Agency (NYDA)

Mr Khathutshelo Ramukumba, CEO: National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), gave an overview of the presentation, highlighting an additional funding request. The funding was for the restructuring programme. He reminded the Committee that they had presented a turn-around strategy for the organisation. One of the key issues was to align the organogram of the organisation to the new strategy and its new priorities. The problem of the high salary bill would be addressed by the restructuring, particularly at the senior management level. At the time of budgeting for the 2015/2016 financial year, the NYDA did not have the numbers of employees that would be impacted by the restructuring. Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) had since assisted in assessing the expected number of lay-offs and the number of posts that would be affected was now known, and had been costed. The NYDA was engaging with National Treasury and were at the meeting to solicit support from the Committee, as they were responsible for the work of the NYDA.

Mr Ramukumba gave an update on the Agency’s progress. He said the micro-structure had been approved by the board and they had started implementation. The executive managers had reduced from nine to five. The five division directors had already been appointed. The laid off directors would be leaving at end of the month. Of the five newly appointed executives, four were capable women, not token appointments. They would be introduced at the next meeting. By the end of the week, senior managers would be reduced from 38 to seven. The process continued to unfold and should be fully finalised by the end of September.

Mr Ramukumba spoke about some of the Agency’s programmes, starting with the Second Chance Matric Rewrite Programme. There were more than 200 000 young people failing matric each year and they needed to be afforded the opportunity to obtain their certificates. The Youth Build programme assisted school drop outs by equipping them with artisan skills. About 1.2 million pupils registered for the first grade, but only 500 000 were writing grade 12 examinations. This meant there was an average of 700 000 pupils that the school system lost every year. The Youth Build programme gave these young people something to offer to the economy. The NYDA was in partnership with municipalities, many of which had shown interest in the programme, but an obstacle was that the NYDA did not have their own contribution to put on the table.

The NYDA was resubmitting the Grant Funding programme for review. They had conducted monitoring and research of the young people they had funded for the past two years, and had shown successes. The programme was performing at a 54% success rate, which was 20% above the national average. The businesses that left the programme were able to sustain themselves for at least 12 months. The number of applications they received from all nine provinces showed that young people were interested in participating in the mainstream economy through entrepreneurship. This made it a critical programme.

Another programme that they were seeking to persuade the Committee to support for additional funding, was the Voter Education Campaign. The NYDA would work with the Independent Election Commission to make sure young people took an interest in participating in the democratic process. The NYDA must be at the forefront of ensuring young people took interest in the democratic process.

The additional funding would be used for additional offices. The approach was to engage with municipalities and ask them to provide rent-free office space. The NYDA provided personnel and assets to produce their products and services. Progress had been made in this regard in ensuring that the NYDA services reached all young people. They were requesting support so that once the offices were open, they were able to keep them operating.

Lastly, Mr Ramukumba updated the Committee on some key policy developments. The National Youth Policy had been approved by Cabinet, and the 2016/2017 financial year budget would be guided by this policy. The Integrated Youth Development Strategy, which was informed by the National Youth Policy, was under way. Review of the NYDA Act was under way through the office of the Deputy Minister. The Youth Employment Plan 2030 was on track, and the full plan should be adopted and presented to Cabinet and the rest of the country before 31 March 2016.

Mr Waseem Carrim, CFO, NYDA, gave a budget breakdown according to the key programme areas. These were Economic Participation, Education and Skills Development, Research and Policy, National Youth Services, Service Delivery Channel, Administration and Employee Costs. The total budget allocation was R427.3 million.

He reported on the first quarter performance against the budget. They had spent 47% of the Economic Participation budget. The variance was due to the timing difference between when grants are approved and when they are dispersed. The mentorship programme had been planned for the first quarter but would most likely be implemented in the second quarter. 85% of the Education and Skills Development budget had been spent. The National Youth Service budget, which assisted young people who enter volunteer programmes by creating meaningful exit opportunities for them, had been 34% spent. The NYDA was working with the Department of Public Works on the Expanded Public Works Programme. The previous programme had run over to this year, so many of the costs would come through in quarter two.

The Service Delivery budget spending was on track, with 88% expenditure incurred. There had been over-spending on Research and Policy, but it was still within the annual budget. The NYDA had found it beneficial to talk to young people through youth dialogue programmes to understand their needs.

Administration expenditure was at 61%. There were two reasons for the under-spending. Firstly, the audit fees had been expected to come through in the first quarter but would be coming through only in quarter two. Secondly, because of the restructuring process, some projects had been parked until the next quarter. They would be redirecting savings to programmes that benefited young people. Employee costs were very close to the budget, at 102%.

The overall picture revealed that 80% of the first quarter budget had been spent by the end of quarter.

Employee cost projections were a challenge, as the budgeted expenditure was R189 million, but they expected to spend R206 million due to the restructuring. This explained the salary costs. There had been a reduction in executives, senior managers and managers, therefore there were no vacancies. Salary cost had ballooned due to restructuring, from 36% in the 2010/2011 financial year to 46% in the current financial year. This was due to the less than inflationary adjustments in annual allocations from National Treasury. Restructuring was critical in bringing the salary bill within the confines allowed by National Treasury.

Mr Carrim showed that the 2015/2016 projected cost for salaries represented 50% of the Agency’s budget, due to retrenchment payouts. However, it went down to 35% for 2016/2017 and 20172018. He said it showed that even with budget cuts, the allocation to salaries could be reduced -- in this case, by 11%. The year on year increase was expected to be minimal, and therefore funds would go towards youth development and not staff costs.

To increase the Agency’s impact, they needed and increase in funds to reach more youth. Looking at the Second Chance Matric Rewrite programme -- which currently assisted about 3 600 pupils at a cost of R 3 800 per pupil -- if the programme were to assist about 24 000 pupils, using the same costing model, it would need a R93 million investment. The programme was biased towards provinces with low pass rates and a low reintegration back into schools for students that had failed.

The Youth Build programme currently cost R2.6 million to benefit 200 young people. It had a better guarantee of entrepreneurship or employment post-programme than was the case with most graduates. The NYDA proposed to work with five more provinces and establish a Youth Build school that would focus on artisan skills. The ability to reach 1 000 more young people would need R25 million.

The Grant programme had the ability to develop close to 1 000 new businesses at a cost of R37 million. The benefit was that each new business had the potential to create three new jobs.

The voter education campaign was looking to improve the statistics of young people who voted. The previous statistics had revealed that one in four young people did not vote. Politics was at a vibrant stage in South Africa and it was a good time to get young people interested. The Agency estimated a collaborative campaign with the IEC would cost R18.2 million.

Another project for which they had requested additional funding was acquiring additional offices, especially in rural areas. It cost the NYDA an estimated R2.3 million per annum to establish a new branch, and about R100 000 per annum to establish a new local office, as it was done in collaboration with the local municipality.

The consolidated request was for R174 million to upscale the programmes. He recalled the Committee had recommended that they find savings before asking for additional funds. The organisation had implemented cost cutting measures to redirect funds to youth development. They would have savings through reprioritisation from the salary bill of about R29.7 million, R48 million and R50 million from 2016 to 2019. The organisation needed to be more impactful and to reach young people in society.

Mr Carrim reported on the first quarter performance in the area of economic participation, and where they had targeted to establish 143 new businesses, they had established 124 enterprises. This was due to the timing difference between grants approved and dispersed. They had 4 700 young people involved in business development, and would assist a further 15 000 in this year. Their community development programme had assisted ten new communities to becoming economically active, and 554 new jobs had been created.

He gave a detailed breakdown of the number of young people assisted per province through the grant programme, business development services, the number of jobs created per programme and career guidance programmes. The skills development programme had been delayed, but would catch up during the year.

The Agency had established eight youth research and development projects under Research and Policy. They had lobbied five organs of state and private sector companies to assist with youth development, and had six in the pipeline. They had raised R21.9 million to support youth development programmes.

Their Service Delivery Channel had assisted 594 000 young people, and the month of June had seen an extensive role out of their programmes.

Mr Ramukumba said that the NYDA was showing clean governance and had been given a clean audit for 2014/2015. The Agency had achieved its highest performance since inception and were requesting support to reach more young people in a meaningful way.

Discussion

The Chairperson commented that the NYDA were on the right track. She asked that they never again use the elections as motivation for funding. The Agency did not exist on the basis of elections, so when negotiating for funding, they should not use it as motivation. She reminded them that they existed because there was great benefit in investing in young people.

She was happy to hear of their clean audit and restructuring plans because of the worrying issue of a top heavy structure. However, she was not happy about the reach of the Agency to young people. There were 278 municipalities and 226 councils, and 42% of the population was young people. She believed all young people must benefit from the NYDA, whether they had gone to university or not. Although they had 14 branches, in the next two financial years she would like to see them plan for more offices to be established in more municipalities. She would then get a sense that the NYDA was visible. It was worrying that the requested additional funds would only address the needs of the existing branches.

Mr S Mncwabe (NFP) congratulated the NYDA on their good work. He believed that the Second Chance Rewrite Programme was not the Agency’s baby, but belonged with the Department of Education. He felt strongly that it should be scrapped and the Agency should focus on developing young people. He requested clarity on the travel and flights expenditure under the Second Chance Rewrite Programme.

Mr Van der Westhuizen said there was a duplication of services. Matric rewrites were the primary responsibility of the Department of Basic Education. The same applied to bursary funds. There should be consolidation to reduce the cost of applying for multiple bursaries for poor youths. He wanted to know how much was paid in the first quarter for severance packages to the exiting executives, if they had been on fixed term contracts, and whether the NYDA had a continued obligation to them, such as medical aide contributions, etc. He asked if the NYDA salaries and benefits were linked to those of the public service.

The Chairperson commented that she had learnt through the media of the commencement of the restructuring plan, and it had not been presented to the Committee. She would like it to be presented to the Committee.

Ms Van Damme congratulated the Agency on the clean audit results. She was concerned that the main reason that they were asking for more money was to pay for the retrenchment packages, as part of the restructuring process. She asked why they had not budgeted for it at the beginning of the financial year. It was bad planning. She asked how much the retrenchment package was per staff member and whether there were golden handshakes.

She was uncomfortable with the voter education campaign, as it had been tainted by political affiliations in the past. She hoped it had no political taints in the future.

She was disappointed that the NYDA Chairperson was not in attendance, as he had written a letter to the Cape Times in favour of military conscription. Young people being forced into the army was a great concern -- they should be joining voluntarily.

Mr Ntombela said it was refreshing to see the promise of the NYDA. He offered advice that he would like to see a strong relationship between the NYDA and municipalities. It should be imperative, because that was where the problems of the country lay.

Ms Dalmini-Dubazana congratulated the NYDA on their audit outcome. She clarified a few issues for the Committee, saying they needed to understand the environment they were operating in. When Members said that the NYDA was utilising money for Department of Education and National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) projects, they were interfering with policy. The policy said if a pupil failed matric they could not go back to school, and they were out of benefits. The NYDA had seen a need and taken the initiative to fill a gap.

She said that the money allocated had to be fought for, and R409 million was difficult to get. It was not easy for the Agency to ask for more, because it had not been easy to get the initial amount. Looking at the NYDA’s work, the money they had was not enough. The country needed to invest in the youth and it was the Committee Members that needed to encourage more funds for the Agency to ensure that the youth became well developed.

Ms Lesoma asked how often the board revised policies to be in line with ever changing laws and policies. She believes it should talk to issues like employment and help with planning and budgeting in the restructuring process. She requested for a comprehensive turnaround strategy, to include the unintended consequences of the lower level outflow of personnel per province through restructuring.

She wanted to know in which area young people were being targeted in the voter education campaigns.

She said it was a pity the CPSI delegates had already left the meeting, as the heads of organisations stood to learn from each other on how each was managing their entity, from young and old alike.

She was pleased with the female appointments, and asked if they also had disabled persons represented in the organisation. Transformation included demographic representation, not only race.

Lastly, she asked that they submit separate reports to indicated the value for money of their international trips.

NYDA’s response

Mr Ramukumba responded that the NYDA had got slightly carried away with wanting to advance the Voter Education programme, but had taken note of the advice.

The Agency had 198 agreements with local municipalities, but not all offices were functional as they did not have staff. The intention was to redeploy staff from headquarters to the local municipalities and increase visibility in these areas.

They had met with the Department of Basic Education (DBE) on the Second Chance Rewrite Programme, and had worked with the Public Sector Education and Training Authority (PSETA) in delivering this programme. The NYDA was only bridging a gap to help rewriters prepare better. The DBE had seen the success of the programme and had agreed to work together with the Agency for three years to upscale the programme. The NYDA could then exit and the DBE continue with it. They were in similar talks with the Department of Higher Education regarding the scholarship funds -- that they be linked with NSFAS and be one funding body for government.

In response to the issue of costs attracted by the restructuring programme, he said that while they had known that restructuring would be costly, PWC was still doing its analysis so they did not know the numbers. They had also anticipated that the saved salary costs will assist in funding it. There were fixed term contractors, and the payouts would differ for each. The agreement with the unions was that voluntary severance packages equating to six months’ salary would be paid and if the employee agreed to work a handover month, they would be paid for the additional month, making it maximum of seven months’ pay. All the NYDA contract agreements had termination conditions. There were no further obligations to members, as their benefits accrued to the last day of employment. The only concession was where bursaries had been awarded -- the payback was waived because employees were not leaving voluntarily.

He said the voter education campaigns would have no political affiliations.

The NYDA usually had internal reports for international trips, and they would be made available to the Committee.

Lastly, he said the costing exercise of the Youth Development Programme included working with Statistics South Africa to see the number of young people per municipal district, then they would know how much they needed to address the problems of each area. They believed they had the funding to implement it.

He concluded by saying the Agency appreciate thed assistance and guidance they received from the Committee.

The Chairperson asked that they sustain a clean audit, and said they were a shining example of cooperation between Committees and organisations.

She requested written responses for unanswered questions, and adjourned the meeting.