Briefing by the Department of Correctional Services on the filling of critical vacancies

Meeting report

The Chairperson accepted an apology from Mr W Horn (DA) and invited the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) to deliver its presentation.

Department of Correctional Services presentation on vacancies
Ms Cynthia Ramulifho, Chief Deputy Commissioner: Human Resources, DCS, began the presentation with a high-level overview of the vacancies in the Department according to occupational category and programme. In the administration programme, critical vacancies included financial, internal audit and compliance posts. In the care programme, critical vacancies included social workers and psychologists. There had been a change in the overall staff-to-inmate ratio from 1:5 to 1:4, attributed to the decrease in the inmate population. The Department had been told to fill vacancies in accordance with the District Development Model. However, its 2021/22 budget had been cut and further cuts were expected over the medium term, which would make it difficult to build additional capacity. The Department wanted the cuts to be made to the goods and services allocation rather than employee compensation. It was engaging with National Treasury on the question.

At senior management level, the vacancies for National Commissioner and Chief Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology Services would be advertised on 13 March 2022. The position of Chief Deputy Commissioner for Central Services would be abolished to cut costs. She discussed other vacancies at senior management level, noting that some of them were due to budget constraints. Of 21 critical vacancies, 11 were in the process of being routed for implementation. The Department asked the Committee to support its request for additional funding, particularly for employee compensation, without which it would struggle to fulfil its mandate.

Discussion
Mr X Nqola (ANC) objected to the late submission of the presentation to the Subcommittee. It had compromised the Subcommittee’s ability to engage productively with it.

The highest percentage of vacancies was among medical practitioners – only ten out of 18 approved posts were filled. This was for 240 correctional facilities and over 140 000 inmates. Even if all 18 positions were filled, how could so few practitioners be expected to serve so many inmates?

The recruitment and retention strategy had been adopted as far back as 2008. Had it been reviewed since then? Had it positively impacted vacancy rates? It needed to be aligned to changing conditions.

The salary level for medical practitioners had been raised to Level 12 but the problem had persisted.

Did the figures for the staff-to-inmate ratio include unfilled posts? How deep had the impact of budget cuts during the COVID-19 years been?

Adv G Breytenbach (DA) was troubled by the ratio and effect of budget cuts on the Department’s ability to operate. DCS already had the largest budget in the Security Cluster and was still unable to make inroads into acceptable ratios. She asked for more information on how the figure was arrived at and how it was prioritised. The presentation had been light on those issued concerned.

Ms Y Yako (EFF) was concerned about how seriously the Department took the healthcare system in prisons. She had done oversight at a prison recently and had been very unhappy with the equipment and staffing of the healthcare facility there.

Mr G Hendricks (Al Jamah-ah) said he had been very impressed by his own oversight visit to a correctional facility.

His constituency office had been flooded with queries and asked whether there was a hotline that he could refer the queries to. He said that there were often long delays when inmates became eligible to apply for parole and asked if relevant documents could be prepared in advance so that an inmate’s application could be heard as soon as they had served two-thirds of their sentence.

Ms N Maseko-Jele (ANC) had also been impressed by a recent oversight visit. A lot remained to be done, in particular, to reduce overcrowding. The other major problem was reintegration of parolees who had served very long sentences after committing serious crimes. Was the Department able to ensure that they did not re-offend?

Responses
Mr Makgothi Thobakgale, acting National Commissioner, DCS, apologised for the late delivery of the presentation document.

Parole applicants were assessed by psychologists and social workers to determine their readiness for life outside a correctional facility. There was also a victim-offender dialogue to help the parole board assess their level of remorse. Challenges remained when they re-entered communities. In future, the Department’s strategy would be to focus on expanding community corrections offices and improving monitoring in partnership with local police stations and non-governmental organisations. The Department had started a project to monitor the handling of parole applications between the National Council for Correctional Services, the pre-release settlement unit, and the case management committees. It had quantified the backlog of parole applications and was addressing it. He invited Mr Hendricks to refer parole queries directly to his office.

He had followed up on the problems at the facility visited by Ms Yako. It turned out that the missing equipment was there, just in another part of the building. This pointed to a larger problem of staff not utilising equipment that had been assigned to them, using their cell phones for light and communication instead of torches and two-way radios, for example.

The Department made use of large numbers of sessional doctors, who could not always stay with the Department over the long term. DCS was a human resources-focused department, so the budget cuts were having a significant impact on service delivery. The strategy going forward was to prioritise appointING more staff at lower levels, such as healthcare practitioners, psychologists and social workers, and fewer managers. However, the Department was subject to National Treasury’s human resource budget planning tool, which required it to reduce its total staff complement by 8 000. This would slow down implementation of the recruitment plan.

Ms Ramulifho said that the Department had approved its integrated human resource strategy in 2021, which included succession planning and a retention strategy. She accepted that there were problems in the Department related to medical doctors. There was supposed to be a doctor for each of the 46 management areas, but the compensation budget had been cut by R11 billion over three years. This impacted the ability to hire professionals. The salaries offered were in line with the guidelines of the Department of Health and the Department of Public Service and Administration. The Department had made a case for offering a rural allowance to doctors and social workers in Mthatha and was looking at ways to improve retention more broadly. It had also noticed that community services had been under-capacitated in the organisational review. Mthatha had been recognised as one of the problematic branches in the review. The impact of the deep cuts would remain the challenge. She reiterated that it would be preferable if budget cuts were made to goods and services rather than compensation of employees, particularly medical doctors to address the issue of retention.

Follow-up questions
Mr J Engelbrecht (DA) said that the current budget allocation for social workers, psychologists and skills workshop staff was far too low to really improve the level of rehabilitation. Further budget cuts were expected in the medium term, and restructuring would give temporary relief at best. The country could not afford a dysfunctional correctional services department. He mentioned the human rights report of the American State Department, which always drew attention to the high number of inmate deaths due to tuberculosis and AIDS in the South African correctional system. What was the Department’s long-term strategy to address staffing problems? The latest part of the State Capture report from the Zondo Commission would harm the public perception of the correctional services, and he predicted a difficult road ahead for the Department.

Ms Maseko-Jele suggested that the Department should look more deeply into the reasons behind the criminality of young offenders. What were their family situations like? Perhaps the community corrections offices could play a role in this. A dedicated team should look into this and report to the Committee and the Department of Social Development.

Response
Mr Thobakgale shared Mr Engelbrecht’s concerns about deaths in the correctional system. The Department tracked such eventualities and would be able to provide statistics. A long-term trend towards inmates with longer sentences inevitably increased the likelihood of death and the cost of treatment for chronic diseases. The Department was responding to budget cuts by looking at inefficiencies and leakages, and re-prioritising spending. He undertook to look into studying the background of juvenile offenders.

Closing remarks by the Chairperson
The Chairperson observed that on the basis of the dates provided by the Department it seemed likely that a permanent National Commissioner would not be appointed earlier than August 2022. The implication was that there would be a nine-month period during which there would be an acting National Commissioner. This exceeded the standard the Committee set of four months to fill vacancies. The Committee needed to see a proper recruitment plan from the Minister. There appeared to be internal power struggles within the Department which led to delays in appointment. The Committee would keep its eye on this problem.

The meeting was adjourned.