Committee Business

Meeting report

The Chairperson welcomed members and mentioned that the year had been a good one and the Portfolio Committee had done a good job. However, he stated that the Committee needed to improve its time management. He apologised to the Committee for the accumulation of minutes and mentioned that having that many minutes that have not been adopted was out of order and should not happen again.

The Portfolio Committee was informed that it should pick one country instead of three for its study tour because the costs of going to three areas was too high and to also reduce the number of Committee members going on the tour. The Committee would negotiate towards going to two countries instead of one which are India and Vietnam.

Mr L Mpumlwana (ANC) said that he was not sure of the criteria used to choose the countries that the Committee would go to and asked why the Committee chose India because he would have preferred China instead of India.

While the Chairperson was in the process of explaining the reason for choosing India, Mr B Radebe (ANC) interrupted and mentioned that the study tour discussion was not on the agenda and there was not enough time to cover everything.

The Portfolio Committee agreed to have the consideration of minutes happen as often as possible to avoid missing recommendations to the last minute.

Adoption of Minutes

The minutes of 16 March 2016, 6 April, 13 April, 20 April, 24 May, 31 August, 7 September, 20 September, 12 October, 19 October, 25 October, 2 November, 9 November, 16 November, 23 and 25 November 2016 were considered and adopted by the Portfolio Committee.  With each set of minutes, a few editorial changes were made such as correction of surnames of members, confirmation of apologies recorded for members who were absent at some meetings, rephrasing of sentences in some minutes.

Mr D Bergman (DA) noted that his surname was spelt incorrectly in most of the minutes and requested the Committee Secretary to take note of how it is spelt.

The portfolio Committee will hold a meeting on 23 January 2017 in Pretoria to discuss the 2nd and 3rd quarterly report.  The Committee members wished each other a blessed and safe holiday season.

The meeting was adjourned.