Telecommunications and Postal Services Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report

Meeting report

Telecommunications and Postal Services Budgetary Review and Recommendation Report

The Chairperson thanked Ms J Kilian (ANC) for her diligent work of explicitly going through the report and editing the minor changes required.

The Chairperson explained the importance of transparency and accountability in terms of the editing of the report, and proceeded to go through the report page by page.

Mr C Mackenzie (DA) made a minor correction to page 4.

Ms M Shinn (DA) identified an error in the first line of page 5. She said the Committee did not interrogate the annual report of the department or of any entities as the Committee only had access to the documents on the day of the presentation. So, that was invalid because of the time the reports were submitted, which was not sufficient for the Committee.

Ms Shinn further emphasised that the error was previously noted in writing as she was not satisfied with the report’s outcomes. She wrote “DTPS annual report in financial statement for 2016 and those of its entities were not interrogated by the committee as the annual report and statement were only made available to the committee on the day of the presentation”.

On page 33, Mr Mackenzie raised awareness to a grammatical error in the fifth bullet point, where there needed to be the word “are” to make the sentence make sense. The same with the following bullet point there was a grammatical error with the word “noted” was missing from the sentence.

On page 38, Mr Mackenzie noted the missing word “some” in the second bullet point. He also had an issue with the third bullet point which was too ambiguous and the error was acknowledged.

Mr Mackenzie continued sharing his sentiment on his issue of his email mail box. His mail box was being flooded with spam from China, which is a major cyber security threat that he faces, to the point he cannot work using his mailbox.

On the same page, Mr Mackenzie suggested some editorial changes at the bottom of the page so it could be read much easier than before.

On page 42, Mr Mackenzie noted an “S” missing in the first bullet point, and a wording issue on the third bullet point. The report read that there was consequences management which would refer to something that occurs within the organisation. The Committee was not referring to this when the report was being compiled, and the Members agreed on this note.

On page 43, the fourth bullet, Mr Mackenzie said the highlight on that point should not be there.

On the same page, Ms Shinn noted that important words needed to be in bold, hence the name of the organisation Skills Education Training Authority: SETA.

The Report was adopted. 

Mr Mackenzie and Ms Shinn complemented the Committee for drawing up the BRR Report in the manner they did. There were some minor issues yet it was drafted very well to the standards of the Committee.

The Chairperson said the Department had been working very hard on these types of reports though researchers who were needed to make these tasks much easier were missing.

Adoption of Minutes
5 September 2017
Minutes of Committee meeting dated 5 September 2017 were adopted with minor amendments.

3 October 2017

Minutes of Committee meeting dated 3 October 2017 were adopted with minor amendments.

5 October 2017

Minutes of Committee meeting dated 5 October 2017 were adopted with minor amendments.

10 October 2017

The Committee went through the minutes page by page, noting minor errors mainly of a grammatical nature.

On page 7, Mr Mackenzie stated that there was an error at the top of the page with the wording, the minutes should be stating that there should be a fibre rollout instead of the instruction being ambiguous.

On the next bullet point Mr Mackenzie noted the grammatical issues on the paragraph, and the following errors that need to be adjusted on that same page.

• Access to funding remains (they should have placed an S)
• Insert; “postal areas”, “new regulator”, “contributed to the decline of SAPO” it failed to”, “the committee was of the view Mikasa contributed to….”

The minutes were adopted with amendments.

Committee business
Ms Shinn requested that the next meetings programme to be confirmed, as from her knowledge the revised programme is on digital migration.

The Chairperson excused all public viewers within the meeting, as the Committee was meeting in private.

Meeting was adjourned.