Committee Reports: Spaza Shops oversight; TERS public participation; Department Annual Report

Finance, Economic Opportunities and Tourism (WCPP)

26 January 2022
Chairperson: Ms D Baartman (DA)
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Meeting Summary

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The Standing Committee considered and adopted three committee reports:
• 2020/21 Annual Report of the Department of Economic Development and Tourism and its entities, Saldanha Industrial Development Zone (IDZ) and Atlantis Special Economic Zone (SEZ).
• Oversight visit to Pick n Pay spaza shops in Langa.
• Public participation on Unemployment Insurance Fund Temporary Employee Relief Scheme.

Meeting report

The Chairperson itemised the three Committee Reports for consideration and said that Members should contribute recommendations and resolutions.

Committee Report on Spaza Shops Oversight Visit
The Chairperson called on Members to indicate whether additions or deletions had to be made. The document had been circulated to Members and thus she assumed it to have been read. She requested Members pay particular attention if their attendance had been noted.

Under Observations, the Chairperson wanted to check if the exact amounts of the project funding from Pick n Pay and that of the Department were noted.

The Procedural Officer, Ms Zaheedah Adams, replied that she did not have that information and asked if she had to request the information from the Department.

The Chairperson replied that she had seen in the Department of Economic Development and Tourism Annual Report that the Department provides owners with a grant of R500 000.

She proposed that the Committee include a resolution that would request the extra information and asked Ms Adams to draft this resolution.

The Chairperson noted the breakdown of who owned and provided what had been given and indicated her satisfaction with this detail.

She referred to the reference to Mr Denton and the Nabe Supermarket at Point 3.12. She wanted to know if the property that houses Nabe Supermarket belonged to Pick n Pay.

Mr G Bosman (DA) informed the Committee that the property was owned by the Nabe family, and not by Pick n Pay.

The Chairperson requested Ms Adams effect the necessary edits.

Ms Adams asked if the word “lease” still had to be included, since the Nabe family owned the property.

The Chairperson advised Ms Adams that it should say the property was owned by the Nabe family; Mr Andrews leased the property from the family.

On page 5, the Chairperson noted another challenge indicated by a female recipient was that she had been required to change to a Nedbank account. She asked Members to confirm this is a requirement of Pick n Pay. This requirement seemed to be a source of unhappiness about the model, although Pick n Pay had explained it had engaged with different banks and Nedbank provided the best service charges. This had been the one point that had made a recipient unhappy. The manner in which the programme had been presented to the Committee had not "represented” how it functioned on the ground. The business owner had been with a different bank for some time and she was happy with that bank but she had to change to Nedbank. Pick n Pay had said that Nedbank had offered the best service charges.

The Chairperson proposed the Committee Report reflect that a requirement within the programme was that Nedbank should be the business bank.

Mr Bosman asked if the Committee could request an update on the investigation Pick n Pay had promised about the complaints. It would also be prudent to ascertain if P&P had looked into an option for people to stay with their banks. Perhaps it could give an update on what happened with this specific case.

Mr Bosman also wanted to ascertain from Pick n Pay the results of the interventions about the specific spaza shop as Pick n Pay promised to investigate and report on the matter.

Mr van der Westhuizen proposed that the Committee request feedback on the recruitment and selection process used to identify potential market store owners.

The second point is the opportunities for market store owners to add specific items to the Pick n Pay inventory and to engage with the Pick n Pay supply chain. One of the store owners indicated that there were some products which her customers would have loved to see but because they had not formed part of the general inventory of Pick n Pay, she was apparently not in a position to stock these items.

He also wanted to ascertain the amounts all the stakeholders contributed to the overall programme such as Pick n Pay, the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism, as well as the City of Cape Town. For example, we were informed that the City of Cape Town had assisted with the upgrade of electricity connections either for a subsidised fee or for free. It would be interesting to know the total support given to those store owners in setting up such a market store.

The Chairperson said that she fully supported the notion of local supply to Pick n Pay. It would thus be prudent to establish which of the market stores had utilised 30 percent of local supply and what those type of products would be and how that actually worked. Part of the problem had been the flexibility as the supply chain ordering system had been preloaded with Pick n Pay produce. Now the challenge was in accounting for those products which were not part of that automated system. She would like to understand if that 30 percent local supply flexibility has been integrated into the automated system so that those products can be accounted for as they are being sold.

After these engagements, the Committee Report was adopted.

Committee Report: WC Department of Economic Opportunities & Tourism Annual Report
The Chairperson pointed out that paragraph 3.1.1 of the Committee Report stated the Department managed to open certain sectors in the province. It should read that the Department had facilitated the George Airport opening as only ACSA could declare an airport open. The Department stepped in and provided representatives from the Department of Health to fulfil the health protocol function which then allowed the reopening of the airport.

The Chairperson noted that the Committee had commissioned research on energy regarding Singapore, Malaysia and Japan. She recalled that do know that um ports that apparently had done quite well had been

Committee Report: Public participation on UIF Temporary Employee Relief Scheme
The Committee decried the lack of public participation, especially from non-metro residents.

The Chairperson indicated that advertisements had gone out through various mediums, including through the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG).

The Committee considered and adopted the minutes of the 7 December 2021 committee meeting.

Meeting adjourned.

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