DMRE 2020/21 Quarter 4 performance, with the Deputy Minister

This premium content has been made freely available

Mineral Resources and Energy

18 August 2021
Chairperson: Mr S Luzipo (ANC)
Share this page:

Meeting Summary

The Committee met on a virtual platform to receive the performance report of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy for the fourth quarter of the 2020/21 financial year. The newly appointed Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy also attended. The presentation and discussion of the Department’s report was followed by the adoption of minutes. In general, Committee Members were concerned about the report as they felt that some of the unmet targets lacked substantial reasons.

The Department’s presentation was divided into two sections. The first focused on the implementation and execution of projects and the second on financial performance. In the fourth quarter, the Department achieved 62% of its targets, partially achieved 19, and failed to achieve 8. For the year as a whole, 65% of targets were achieved. This was 15% short of the 80% minimum achievement threshold set by National Treasury. The Department had underspent on its R7.6 billion annual budget for 2020/21 by R382 million (5.0%). A recurrent cause cited for not achieving targets was the COVID-19 pandemic and the regulations that followed.

Committee Members welcomed the report but expressed deep concern about under-achievements attributed to the pandemic. Members raised questions about poor decision making as a factor in the Department’s under-performance. Why were there delays in drafting an Electricity Pricing Policy? The Committee asked the Department to shed more light on how procurement impeded the achievement of targets. Members asked if a new system could be devised to present targets to the Committee. Merely presenting the number of targets met was described as insufficient. The Committee asked for background information about the targets.

Meeting report

The Chairperson welcomed the Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Dr Nobuhle Nkabane (DM), the representatives of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) and Members of the Committee. He outlined the main agenda of the meeting and highlighted that the fourth quarter report gave the Department an opportunity to reflect on its total performance. He acknowledged the apologies from the Minister, Mr Gwede Mantashe, Mr J Lorimer (DA), Mr T Langa (EFF), Ms P Madokwe (EFF), Mr V Zungula (ATM) and Mr J Bilankulu (ANC). He offered the DM the opportunity to make the opening remarks.

The DM thanked the Chairperson and the Portfolio Committee for affording the Department an opportunity to present its performance report. She introduced the delegation from the DMRE and gave a summary of the overall performance of the Department’s branches. The Nuclear Energy Programme scored the highest, having achieved 83% of its targets. It was followed by Programme and Projects Management with 80%, Administration 73%, Mine Health and Safety Inspectorate 67%, Mining, Minerals and Energy Policy Development 52%, and the Minerals and Petroleum Regulations Programme being the lowest with 43% of targets achieved. All the branches had underspent on their budgets with a variance of 8.2% in the Administration branch and 7.2% underspending by the Mine Health and Safety Inspectorate. The reasons for underspending were attributed to delays both in filling of vacant positions and the in implementation of projects. She invited Adv. Thabo Mokoena, Director-General (DG), DMRE, to shed more light on the presentation.

The DG thanked the DM and extended his greetings to everyone in the meeting. He asked Mr Lucas Mulaudzi, Head of Strategy, and Ms Yvonne Chetty, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), to lead the presentation.

The presentation was in two parts. The first focused on the general performance of the Department’s projects and the second focused on its financial performance. Mr Mulaudzi led the first part and the CFO led the second.

Performance highlights
The DMRE shared a table that showed the accumulation of targets from the first up to the fourth quarter. This table outlined the Department’s six branches. Cumulatively, there were 46 targets and the DMRE achieved 62% of them. He added that 19 targets were partially achieved and 8 were not achieved. He gave a breakdown analysis of the individual performance of projects. In addition to the figures already provided by the DM, he said Administration had partially achieved 3 projects, Minerals and Petroleum Regulations 6, Mining, Minerals and Energy Policy Development 7, Mine Health and Safety Inspectorate 1, Programme and Projects Management 1, and Nuclear 1. He explained that the National Treasury set a performance threshold that required all government Departments to score at least 80% per annum in the achievement of planned targets. He showed a bar chart that illustrated that the Department scored 65% of this designated threshold for the year and indicated a 15% shortfall in performance.

The DMRE proceeded to present its performance highlights. (Please see the slides for complete details).These were mainly targets that were achieved. Among these were the successful request for procurement of new generation capacity for long-term power, and savings achieved in various projects. The Solar Water Heater (SWH) Project managed to install 2 866 water heaters in the Mahikeng Local Municipality, 162 in the Matlosana Municipality, 175 in the J B Marks Municipality, 186 in Bitou and 201 in the Mossel Bay Municipality. 176 837 additional households were connected to the electricity grid. A total of 921 jobs were created through the issuing of mining rights in the fourth quarter (against a target of 1 000). A cumulative total of 4 721 jobs had been created in the 2020/21 financial year. A notable achievement was the creation of 2 black industrialists in the quarter, contributing to a cumulative achievement of 9 against the annual target of 10. There were also achievements that the Department claimed would have entirely accomplished had it not been for budget cuts. For instance, 60 km of new Mega Volt (MV) lines were constructed while upgrades of the 50 km of existing MV lines were affected by the budget cuts.

In the 2020/21 financial year, the Department managed to accomplish 112 mining economics inspections and 302 environmental inspections. A total of 95.24% of petroleum license applications were approved with a minimum of 50% allocated to Historically Disadvantaged South Africans (HDSA). A strategy to implement a 2 500 Mega Watt (MW) nuclear power station was developed and presented to the Minister. Similarly, the report on the monitoring of Koeberg’s Plant Life Extension Plan was sent to the Minister. The DMRE also achieved its target to process applications within the standard turnaround time.

Mine health and safety inspection progress was reported. A total of 1 198 diseases were reported from April 2020 to March 2021 compared to 2 060 diseases during the same period in 2019. There were 60 fatalities reported from April 2020 to March 2021 compared to 59 reported during the same period in 2019. Overall, there were 1 811 injuries reported from April 2020 to March 2021 compared to 2 375 injuries reported during the same period in 2019, and a total of 487 accident-intimated investigations were completed from April 2020 to March 2021. The DMRE also reported that a total of 8 030 out of 8 800 planned inspections & audits were conducted from April 2020 to March 2021. Apart from mine health achievements, it was reported that a Mining Masterplan had been developed and submitted to the Ministry for consultation. Finally, a total of 493 invoices were received and 99% of them were paid within the target of 30 days.

Performance tables
This section of the presentation provided more details on the Departments performance up to the fourth quarter. However, focus was on the projects that were partially achieved and those that were not achieved at all. One of the key areas presented was partial achievement of the goal to approve shareholder compacts of two State Owned Entities (SOEs). The reasons for deviation were that documents submitted had gaps therefore they had to be reviewed. The creation of an ethics committee was partially achieved due to delays on the finalisation of the National Macro Organisation of Government (NMOG) project and the transfer of officials responsible for integrity activities from Corporate Services to the Directorate Risk and Integrity Management to execute these functions. The partial achievement of job creation through issuing mining rights, and that of the Social Labour Plan (SLP) and creation of black industrialists were all attributed to the imposition of the national lockdown regulations. Similarly, the failure to participate in District Planning Forums was due to lockdown restrictions. The DMRE claimed that forums could not be convened under these circumstances. In other targets, the failure to initiate a feasibility study was attributed to delays by the investor to make a decision about whether or not they would proceed with the investment.

Overall, there were eight unachieved targets in the performance table. In addition to the two stated above, two had no reasons for deviation. These were the approval of the Green House Gas (GHG) reporting framework, and the Approach to Distribution Asset Management (Adam) Framework for municipal infrastructure asset management. While there were no comments on the latter, the service provider was only appointed in December 2020 for the GHG due to delays in consultations with the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries (DEFF) and securing funding. Others targets like the failure to achieve a draft of the Electricity Pricing Policy were attributed to deferment. The DMRE deferred this project as it was waiting for the unbundling of the electricity sector. In addition to this, the unmet target to draft a Renewable Energy Sector Master Plan was attributed to delays in decisions on whether the DMRE was to run a parallel process or collaborate with other institutions.
 
For the partially achieved targets, an additional four projects attributed under-achievement to COVID-19 related issues. These were the number of mining economics inspections executed, the environmental inspections executed, the approval of the Bid Evaluation Committee, and the number of qualitative inspections conducted. The targets to draft an energy transition framework and a report on responses to climate change did not have reasons for deviation. Comments were that reports were being finalised. Another project in this section was the SWH project. Reasons for deviation were that some municipalities lagged behind in terms of installation due to numerous reasons. These included, among other things, disputes regarding funds allegedly owed to suppliers, shortage of consumables, and lack of suitable and adequate storage facilities in municipalities.

Financial performance per programme
The Department displayed the budget for its six branches. [The date on the slide should be 2020/21]. In total, the budget was approximately R7.5 billion after two subsequent reductions due to COVID-19. Of this amount, only R7.1 billion was spent which resulted to a cumulative variance of R382.1 million. The Department broke-down its financial performance into economic classifications. This provided greater details on how much of the budget allocated to projects was spent or not spent. For instance, eight out of 12 economic classifications recorded low variance in the fourth quarter. This meant that they spent most of their allocated budget. These were the Compensation of employees with 5.6% variance, Goods and Services with 16.9%, Transfers and Subsidies with 3.9%, Integrated National Electrification Programme with 6.2%, Public Entities with 0.0%, Energy Efficiency & Demand Side Management with 1.8%, and Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) - Small Scale Mining projects with 0.0%. Water management marginal mines had the highest variance at 100.0%, followed by Payments for capital assets at 77.4% and the Households and the Sector Education Training Authority (SETA) at 37.6%.

Various reasons were provided to explain variances. For instance, the underspending on Compensation of employees was attributed to delays in the filling of posts while Goods and Services underspending was attributed it to delays in the implementation of projects that included the Integrated National Electrification Programme’s (INEP) non-grid project, oversight evaluation, the SWH projects and many others. The variance in Transfers and Subsidies was attributed it to the underspending of funds in the INEP non-grid project and funds that were not disbursed to the SETA. Payments for Capital Assets were about R14 million below the budgeted amount. This was attributed to the amount budgeted for office equipment being significantly higher than needed. However, the DMRE stated that due to COVID-19 regulations, staff was working remotely. As a result, there was a request for laptops.

The Department transferred R2.2 billion of its allocated budget to public entities. R599 000 not transferred to Mintek was due to the expanded public works incentive that were not earned due to the non-achievement of set targets for job creation. The Department had made a request to roll over a total of R265.05 million from the 2020/21 to the 2021/22 financial year to finalise payments in the 2021/22 financial year. However, due to the Treasury Regulations criteria for roll over requests, it could only request 70% of the total budget balance of R382.10 million from the 2020/21.

Several measures were taken to mitigate underspending. For instance, through monitoring the staff turnover rate, the Human Resources (HR) division was able to continuously alert managers about vacancies in their areas. This included assisting them with immediate commencement of the recruitment process. The monitoring of the goods and services classification was to be implemented through the Department’s Procurement Plan. The Supply Chain Management (SCM) division, on a monthly basis, was to communicate with different divisions of projects that were due for presentation to ensure that the procurement process commenced in time. The Procurement Process required reports to the Accounting Officer and Treasury on a quarterly basis. On a monthly basis, the Department’s In-Year-Monitoring report was to be shared with Programme Managers so that they could take note of the overall performance of their responsibility areas.

The DM thanked the DG and his team for the presentation, and thanked the Committee once again for allowing the DMRE to present its performance report. She concluded the presentation by inviting comments from the Committee.

The Chairperson welcomed the presentation and opened the floor for discussion.

Discussion
Mr K Mileham (DA) expressed concern about under-achievements in the Mining and Petroleum Regulation section (slide 6 of the presentation). A significant number of unmet targets seemed to be entirely attributed to lockdown regulations. Whilst it was a fact that the COVID-19 pandemic affected the economy and various government departments, he said that everyone had since learnt to adapt to the circumstances. He asked the DG if there were any steps being taken to ensure that the Department’s personnel could work virtually, i.e., ensure that the necessary regulatory oversight was being conducted virtually. The Electricity Pricing Policy in slide 26 was another cause for concern. He challenged the decision to defer it because Eskom had not been unbundled, and suggested that work could have been done in advance. There was no need to physically unbundle Eskom to develop a pricing policy. Similarly, the explanations provided on the deferment of the Gas Masterplan were equally problematic. He asked why work on the plan had not been conducted virtually?

Mr Mileham said he opposed the Department’s stance to defer the Integrated Energy Plan. According to Section 6 of the National Energy Act, the Minister had the mandate to develop and review an integrated energy plan which was expected to be published in the national gazette on an annual basis. He said neither the Minister nor the Department had the discretion to defer this project to the next financial year. Therefore, the Department and the Minister were accountable for the unmet target. He described this as a major failure by the Minister and the Department and demanded clarity on why the plan had not been attended to for years. Similar disappointment was expressed about the National Solar Heater Programme. He described it as the Committee’s “perennial bugbear” because of the unending promises given by the Department that the project was going to be successfully implemented. Out of a target of 80 000 water heaters, only 2 142 had been installed. Despite reports that suppliers were being paid, the progress promised to the Committee was still not yet realised. Considering this, he asked if the DG was willing to acknowledge that he had failed because he was the one making the promises. Finally, he raised concerns about the explanation given to unmet target of the Draft Renewable Energy Master Plan in slide 33. He said that decision making was one of the Department’s main duties, therefore, the explanation provided was evidence of poor management.

Mr M Mahlaule (ANC) agreed with Mr Mileham on the issue concerning the performance of the Mining and Petroleum Regulation section. He said while some of the reasons made sense, cumulatively the Department had not progressed. This was especially concerning considering the uncertainties surrounding when the COVID-19 pandemic would end. He said if the situation remained the same, explanations given in the current presentation were going to be carried into the following year. Therefore, there was a need to devise a strategy to function under the prevailing circumstances. Concerning the performance highlights about the installation of water heaters, he requested the Department to also disclose the number of water heaters that had not been installed. Firstly, this helped navigate the project towards its logical conclusion by showing how much was left of the project. Secondly, this made it possible to hold the Department accountable for unmet targets.

Mr Mahlaule asked for clarity about “the ghost” called procurement that seemed to be stalling INEP’s targets. For two years the Department failed to provide additional non-grid electrification due to procurement. Up to the present meeting, no clear explanation had been provided to explain where exactly the problem was with procurement. For that reason, he suggested that the Department had to prepare a presentation specifically geared towards educating the Committee about this “ghost” called procurement because it seemed to be impeding many other projects. He requested clarity on the Petroleum Refinery project in Richard’s Bay. He said it was not helpful to constantly receive reports that the project was not fulfilled due to investors. There was a need to clarify whether or not the project was still to be pursued to avoid raising expectation of the people of KwaZulu Natal and also carrying it to the Department’s Annual Performance Plans in the following year.

Echoing other Committee Members, Ms V Malinga (ANC) expressed concerns about the water heater project and demanded clarity on why it was being delayed. She further pointed out that the numbers of fatalities was still significant despite being under those from 2019. This was possibly due to the Department’s inefficient inspectorate. She requested clarity on why only 8 030 out of a total of 8 800 inspections were conducted despite the mining sector being in operation during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also expressed dissatisfaction about the INEP’s underachievement. She stressed the importance of this arm to the rural municipalities and the project to provide electricity to rural households. Poor delivery by the INEP had a negative impact on these municipalities, therefore, there was a need to improve.

The Chairperson said on an operational level the report was good although he was “on the borderline of being frustrated” and “worried” about facts contained in it. He proposed that it was time for Parliamentary Portfolio Committees to review how they conducted their tasks. This was specifically in relation to the “pilgrimage style” of reporting which he suggested if left unrevised could lead Committees into fudging issues. He was particularly worried by the manner in which targets were reported. He said measuring the quantity of targets was insufficient and emphasised that there was a need to clearly state their rationale. This helped differentiate between minor and major targets. This was directly related to the issue of backlogs. He asked where the Petroleum Products Regulations division located the backlog in its targets. He asked the division if its targets included “outstanding matters” or “cumulative” matters. This was because reports included projects from previous years. For instance, how could the Committee measure the impact of COVID-19 on projects when some projects had backlogs dating five years ago. Supporting previous Committee Members’ comments, he requested clarity on the system of procurement. He said that there was a grave need to review the conduct of duties in the Department.

Responses
The Deputy Minister thanked the Committee for constructive criticism and expressed eagerness to consider it in the Department’s endeavour to improve operations. She acknowledged that the Department tended to be reactive rather than proactive and highlighted that this was an area worth improving. However, she pleaded with the Committee about the need to invest in digital equipment necessary for the execution of duties remotely. Finally, she said the Department adhered to all prescribed regulations and stated that it was going to improve on the issue concerning Section 6 of the National Energy Act.

Mr Tseliso Maqubela, DDG: Petroleum Products Regulations, extended his gratitude to the Committee for the valuable feedback. He promised to be as candid as possible in his responses. To support the presentation, he emphasised that the Department was severely impacted by the pandemic in the first quarter of the 2020/21 financial year. As a result, none of the targets were achieved. This was partially because despite being significantly affected by the pandemic, the Department resisted changes to targets. He reiterated the DM’s call to invest in digital equipment, and explained how the procurement of laptops took longer than expected. He also confirmed that Saudi Aramco, the principal investors of the Richard’s Bay refinery project, had pulled out of the deal. At this point, the Department was only waiting for them to put it in writing that they were no longer going to continue with the project.

Mr Maqubela said that the Department was committed to participate in District Planning Forums. However, these were not convened. This made it impossible for the Department to report on them. The Department was therefore waiting for an invitation to these forums once they commenced. He pointed out that although the Department did not achieve much on job creation in the fourth quarter, cumulatively it achieved the target set for the year. The target for the year was 4 000 and the Department managed to create 4 721 jobs. He said the unmet targets of the SLPs were a result of the closure of the construction industry in the first quarter. He explained that SLP projects were in the construction industry, therefore, it was impossible to reach the target as the Department had no control over the sector or were the projects were being conducted. He said that it was difficult to recover from these setbacks in the first quarter. Similarly, environmental inspections were severely affected in the first quarter by the pandemic. In fact, no inspections were carried out during this period. Although a catch up plan was drafted to recover from this, it was still impossible to recover. Again, the Department resisted to ask for a change in its targets despite being under pressure. Finally, he recommended that the issues with the backlog must be included as targets as they also deserve to be monitored.

Ms Ntokozo Ngcwabe, DDG: Mineral Policy and Promotions, DMRE, thanked the Committee for its valuable feedback. She acknowledged that the Department’s performance was below its standards. This was partially attributed to the merger of the two Departments which resulted in one branch pulling more weight than the other. She said if one would look at the performance of the two Departments separately the picture would be completely different. She responded that the Electricity Pricing Policy had been reviewed and confirmed that she had a workshop scheduled in the following day with the drafting team. In addition, the Department had extensive consultations with relevant stakeholders to discuss the draft of the policy.

Ms Ngcwabe agreed with the Committee Members that the Gas Master Plan was a concern. She said the explanations forwarded to explain its delays were not convincing and expressed eagerness to solve to problem. She mentioned that a meeting had been scheduled on 20 April 2021, to meet with the team responsible for it. In this meeting, issues surrounding the Integrated Energy Plan (IEP) were also on top of the agenda. Once again, she said that the explanation given about the delays with the IEP draft were not convincing and that she wished to find out why the Clause in the National Energy Act had not been enacted. Finally, she sympathised with the DM and stated that as a new member in her position, it was unfair that she was bearing some of the criticism channeled towards the Department. She said the officials on the ground were the ones charged with the responsibility to ensure that targets are met. Having said that, she promised that in the next meeting, she would be presenting better results.

Mr Jacob Mbele, DDG: Programmes and Projects, thanked the Committee for feedback. He began by pointing out that the current presentation was based on reports up to 31 March 2021, and that there had been notable progress in some of the targets since then. He explained that initially INEP’s target was to install grid-electricity to an additional 180 000 national households. However, due to the pandemic, this target was reduced to 137 000 national households. Despite this cut on the target, Eskom and various other Municipalities managed to install grid electricity to an additional 176 000 households which was significantly above the designated target. Although some of the households were rolling over from the previous financial year, this was notable progress under the prevailing circumstances. He also said installations of non-grid electricity were more than the figures reflected in the presentation. He said the presentation focused on non-grid installations from the previous financial year and explained that there were more installations after that. The reasons for not including them was that the Department first had visit the site and verify the installations. To date, out of a target of 15 000, just under 16 000 households were connected with non-grid electricity.

Mr Mbele said that progress with water heaters was affected by other factors. One of them was storage. To avoid additional storage costs with the manufacturers, water heaters had to be transported from the manufacturers to various storage facilities before they could be installed. This storage cost the Department about R300 million. At present 62 000 units have been moved from the manufacturer out of a total of 84 000 units. A few manufacturers demanded additional storage compensation and were refusing to release the units on those grounds. The matter was handed over to the legal team. Quantitatively, in March 2021, there were just over 2 000 units installed. To date, 12 000 water heaters were installed, and 3 500 of these were partial installations. He explained that partial installations were installations that demanded additional work. For instance, the producers manufactured the water heaters according to specific housing standards. Consequently, some of the households that were allocated for installations were old and were based on outdated architecture. This then required additional work to be done upon installation and this resulted in additional costs.

Mr Mbele continued to share the challenges that the Solar Water Heater Project was facing. He said there were instances where units had missing parts when received from the manufacturer. Although some manufacturers were cooperative, some were not and this often resulted in legal action being taken. In other instances, units from the manufacturer failed and this again demanded the Department to liaise with the producer. To mitigate these unforeseen challenges, he said the Department had teams on site who monitored proceedings. Weekly meetings were set with these teams to ensure efficient execution of the project. Finally, he responded to comments on the Renewable Energy Master Plan. He explained that master plans were mostly driven by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) with the expectation that the DMRE would take over and lead. However, there were challenges caused by parallel processes. He explained that there was a process that the team in the DMRE had started and there was also another process that the DTIC had also started. The challenge, therefore, was how to get these processes aligned. Fortunately, this alignment was achieved and a single team was assigned to drafting the plan.

The CFO began by addressing questions about procurement. She said once a year the Department was expected to draft a procurement plan by the National Treasury. This concerned all procurements above R500 000. Input on the procurement plan came directly from the DDGs (branch managers). However, the main challenge was that branches were delaying with feedback. She stated that the Department was expected to report quarterly to the National Treasury. To improve the quality of reports, she explained that the Department resolved to have monthly reports from its branches internally. This, however, was compromised by the branches’ late adoption of corrective measures. Although the plan was clear about the amount the Department wanted to contract for and its budget for the project, delays by the branches compromised the execution of the target.

The CFO said there was also slow reaction to procurement queries. For instance, the Department had to write to the National Treasury to request a deviation. Consequently, it took long to obtain approval. Although everyone was expected to have adapted to operate under the COVID-19 circumstances, there were certain duties that could not be executed virtually. This is because there were confidential files that staff could not take home. As a result, there was a constant need to use the office building. Although strategies were put in place to ensure that the relevant personnel used the office, building closures due to outbreaks impeded progress. The Department was a bit under-staffed in the supply-chain management area and said a request had been logged for additional capacity. The system of having two Head Offices [one for mining and one for energy] affected efficiency because decision making took longer than expected. Another area that demanded improvement was the Information Technology (IT) department because there were occasions were systems unexpectedly shut down for days. Notwithstanding all these challenges, she assured the Committee that action was being taken to address these issues.

The CFO said there were delays in the availability of staff for the evaluation of bids for the non-grid programme. There were disagreements among members of the Evaluation Committee over the evaluation system. This caused more delays. To solve the problem, the Department had decided to appoint a panel of service providers for three years as opposed to two years as in the past. To address questions about unused funds in the Department, her office had engaged each branch about their expenditure and budgets. The branches were therefore aware that there would be funds remaining.

Mr David Msiza, DDG: Mine Health and Safety Inspectorate, thanked the Committee for its feedback, and welcomed comments on the safety of mine workers. He reiterated that the safety of workers was a priority to the Department. After that, he recited a Zulu proverb which in English translated to being dragged down by one’s own positive milestones. He explained that despite the occurrence of accidents, measures were already in place to improve inspection especially amidst the pandemic. Given the importance of the mining industry to the national economy, the Minister sought to avoid stoppages in the sector due to COVID-19 outbreaks. Thus, for the period reported, the number of inspections conducted upscaled. These were increased from 8 000 to 8 800, and of this figure 8 030 inspections were achieved. This was about 90% of the initial target.

Mr Msiza said the Department always tried to understand the causes of accidents in the working space and how this could be improved. This involved reflecting on past experiences and analysing how different the challenges of the present were from those of the past. In the past the Department used to report about 9 000 severe injuries that involved falling from high ground and transportation accidents. Currently, there were 1 800 injuries which were less severe than those in the previous years. To support this point, he said in the past South Africa used to be ranked as the country with the 6th most severe mining accidents in the world. However, to date, it compares favourably with the best performing mining countries globally. These improvements were also a result of engaging leadership in the mining industry. This included senior members of the management like Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) as well as leaders of labour unions. These leaders were advised to provide reports with short and long term measures they are taking to improve the health and safety of workers. To shed more light on improvements, he said the number of workers who died from COVID-19 was significantly greater than those who died from mining accidents.

The DG endorsed the responses provided by the DDGs and representatives of the Department. He said everyone was accountable for the duties allocated to them and assured the Committee that action was going to be taken to address the discrepancies identified in the presentation. He mentioned that the Department under the leadership of DDG Ncwabe was making progress towards the implementation of Bills. He welcomed criticism on the Solar Water Heater Project but emphasised the point that progress on the ground was more than that reported in the meeting. However, he acknowledged that there were projects that went completely wrong and said that the Department was looking into these issues. Forensic investigations were underway to solve these issues. He assured the Committee that the Department was not going to hesitate to institute consequence management where it was needed. He also said the merger of entities was included in the Department’s 2021-2022 APP, therefore, an update on this work was only going to be given in the first quarter report. He also said the Department had measures on the ground to evaluate whether reports were factual or not.

The DM concluded the Department’s responses and handed over the meeting to the Chairperson.

Further discussion
The Chairperson thanked the Department for its update. He asked Mr S Maboda, the Committee Researcher and Mr N Kweyama, the Content Advisor, to do a scan of the first, second, and third quarterly reports. Their duty was to look at the overall scores of the Department, i.e., how many targets were met and how many were not. This was going to help the Committee prepare for the Budgetary Review and Recommendation Report (BRRR). He advised the Department to be explicit with its targets as this helped shed light on progress made. This was because the majority of projects that were meant to be reported in the fourth quarter of 2020/21 were moved to the first quarter of 2021/22. This was a cause for concern and was counterproductive. He commended the CFO for her honesty, and disclosing that branches delayed with feedback. This situation clearly showed that there was an administrative crisis. He encouraged the relevant branches of the Department to improve the manner in which they conducted their duties. In the future, measures were going to be taken against members who failed to execute their tasks. A system of administration checkups had to be developed to monitor performance.

Minutes
The Committee adopted the Minutes for 03 and 10 August 2021.

Closing remarks
The Chairperson thanked the DM, the Department and the Committee for the report and constructive feedback.

The meeting was adjourned.
 

Download as PDF

You can download this page as a PDF using your browser's print functionality. Click on the "Print" button below and select the "PDF" option under destinations/printers.

See detailed instructions for your browser here.

Share this page: