Committee Report on Department of Rural Development and Land Reform & entities Budget

Meeting report

The Committee went through the minutes of previous meetings dated 29 March 2017, 2 May, 3 May, 9 May and 10 May 2017. However, Mr M Filtane (UDM) commented that he was not happy with the use of the term “grey” on 4.3 on page 2 of the minutes of the meeting that was held on 10 May 2017, because the term was thought to be ambiguous. The Chairperson noted the comment, and said that this would be corrected.

The Chairperson said that last week the Committee had been asked to look at findings and recommendations of what must be changed and added to the draft report on the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform’s (DRDLR’s) Budget Vote 39  in order for it to be processed as soon as possible, as the budget vote was going to take place on Friday, 19 May. She opened the floor for discussion, and asked what Mr T Walters (DA) and Mr K Robertson (DA) thought of the report.

Mr Walters said he was happy with the report, and added that the 50/50 policy must be included.

The Chairperson also noted that the progress report on page 23 must be added on to page 22 under ‘Rural Development,’ up to the last bullet. She asked for more input from Members.

Mr P Mnguni (ANC) suggested that in bullet point 3 on page 23, under ‘restitution,’ the Department must provide a recommendation plan as to how they proposed to deal with the 916 outstanding untraceable claims, as this needed to include costs, and in essence an implementation plan was needed to sort out every detail. There needed to be a plan to pin them down.

Mr Robertson said that at the beginning of May, the Committee had spoken about the issue of land audits, which were included in this report. This had been discussed with the Department when it was here.

The Chairperson said that the second report on the land audits had to be submitted to the Committee, since the first one had been handed in, and therefore the House would be waiting for it.

Mr Walters was concerned that if pressure was not applied on the progress report, then it would take longer to get to the Committee, so the wording should be rephrased to “the report must urgently be submitted to the Committee”.

The Chairperson replied that she thought this was included under Rural Development and Land Reform, or under National Geomatics. The Department should be the one that updated the Committee about the progress of the land audits, because the information was not wanted while it was raw. The information that must be brought forward was the final one. Furthermore, there needed to be updates about land audits. She asked whether there were any more matters.

Ms N Magadla (ANC) proposed the adoption of the draft report.

Mr Walters seconded the proposal.

The Chairperson finally said that the Committee report had been adopted, and asked the Committee to prepare for the budget vote on Friday, 19 May 2017.

The Committee then went on to discuss other matters that were related to the Committee’s logistics, and deviated a bit from the business of the day. These matters were quickly concluded.

The meeting was adjourned.