Home Affairs BRRR; Concerns re DHA offices; with Ministry

Meeting report

Concerns re DHA offices

The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee, Mr M Chabane (ANC), officially opened the meeting and welcomed all. The Committee would like to bring to the attention of the Minister of Home Affairs and the team from the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) the developments in the Department’s offices in Chatsworth and Harry Gwala on issues of the booking system, service turnaround time, and customer relations.

The Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, highlighted that he and the Deputy Minister were in Geneva during the proceedings. However, he has read all the questions that the Committee asked and the Director-General would be in a better position to respond to the issues raised by the Committee.

The Director-General (DG) of the DHA, Mr Tommy Makhode, started by expressing his apology to the Committee for the Department’s late responses. During the last meeting on Tuesday after the presentation of the Annual Report by DHA, the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), the Government Printing Works (GPW), and the Border Management Authority (BMA), the Committee made additional requests for questions to be sent through. Some questions were responded to, and others had to be responded to in writing. So far, all questions have been responded to through the Content Advisor and the Department deeply regrets the delay in providing these responses.

Regarding the Harry Gwala matter cited by the Chairperson in his opening remarks, Mr Makhode indicated that the Department has tasked the provincial manager, including the Deputy Director-General of Operations, to investigate the complaints that have been made against these offices. Once that has been concluded, the Department will report back to the Committee.

Regarding Chatsworth, Mr Makhode indicated that the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) looks after this office. In a prior engagement, the resolution was that the DPWI had requested more time to attend to the issues that the DHA raised. The DHA is aware that the office in Chatsworth is in a dire state. There is ongoing engagement with the DG of Public Works and Infrastructure regarding looking at alternative solutions. Although there is currently a mobile office in Chatsworth, the reality is that DHA, including other departments using the office, will need to relocate.

Mr K Pillay (ANC) proposed that there is a bilateral agreement between DHA and DPWI to look at an interim solution as the issue in Chatsworth is a disaster that is waiting to happen, and this might end up with a lawsuit if the roof ceiling caved in. To avoid that, both departments should look at risk mitigation in the short term, including relocating the offices currently in the building.

Minister Motsoaledi indicated that he was disappointed about the turn of events. The DHA has been engaging with DPWI about each infrastructure project that needed attention and a promise was made by the DPWI to deliver on the infrastructure. However, there has not been much progress. As the DHA continues to engage with DPWI, the DHA will look closely into these issues, including considering alternative solutions.

Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs 2022/23 Budgetary Review and Recommendation Report

Mr Adam Salmon, Committee Content Advisor, briefed the Committee on the Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report (BRRR) by going through some of the additional information that DHA sent in last year’s BRRR and the budget vote report. The Department’s action plan addressed all of the Auditor-General's (AG) findings in addition to internal audit recommendations. The DHA was holding regular back-to-basic meetings, the departmental management meeting (DMC), EXCO.

The Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure should ensure that all officials and others who acted on the illegal procurement at Beitbridge are held to account. It was indicated that DPWI had tabled a report with the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) on the procurement of the Beitbridge fence.

The need for the DHA to increase its partnerships with the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) to resolve network issues within 24 months. SITA reported a bid for the appointment of a layer 2 service provider to implement the redesign of the core architecture which is at an advanced state, and it is with the auditors for review. Migration of service from old legacy equipment to the new SDN-ready equipment has been completed in Bloemfontein, Polokwane, Potchefstroom, Mmabatho, Beta, Kimberley, Bisho, Welkom, Upington, Pietermaritzburg. The remaining SITA switching centres will be migrated during the current financial year.

On the matter of working on weekends and after hours, a resolution has not yet been reached with Unions, but the Department will expand the services to seven days a week using the kiosks once they are ready for rollout.

In terms of last year’s recommendation, it was mentioned that the DHA's speeding up of unabridged birth certificates increased its birth registration to close to 800 000 within 30 days and that 80% of births were now registered within 30 days. Further improvements would require connecting additional health facilities within the budgetary confines.

The Department is expanding its mobile units to provide smart cards and an additional 100 units are being rolled out this financial year. Regarding the self-service kiosks, another level will be rolled out to stop the issuance of green identity books.

The Branch Appointment Booking System has been rolled out to 199 offices and its expansion to include collections will be completed in the second quarter of the 2023/24 financial year.

The DHA, in response, indicated that geographic areas of population of 40 000 or below were considered for mobile offices and that the dual connectivity to these mobile units was being expanded. The Department is collecting significant amounts of applications of up to 200,000 from the mobile offices. The DHA is working with the Department of Basic Education on prioritising matric learners. There is also ongoing engagement with the Department of Health for free deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing.

The DHA is making all possible efforts to detect and prevent irregular expenditures from arising. Consequence management is being applied to the officials who have been found responsible for irregular expenditure.

Concerning the hiring of youth in the digitisation project, this is something that was undertaken in three phases. The second phase saw the recruitment of 4 000 youth in March 2023 and the last phase was placed in the second week of May. In the response, the DHA indicated that many of the new employees took on additional jobs, resulting in the loss of some applicants.

Concerning the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) challenges faced by the DHA: The Department has been engaged with relevant stakeholders to access the entire DHA network to understand its architecture. The Department is also conducting technical security and risk assessment to determine the impact of ICT service disruptions to stabilise it.

Regarding holding officials responsible for the loss of financial data without relevant backup in place: After the ministerial review panel, a report was handed over to EXCO in September 2022 and recommendations were being implemented including nine official letters and written warnings to staff. One official has been suspended and one is under disciplinary process.

The annual financial statements were submitted only on 29 December 2022 to the Auditor-General - the report would have been signed off by 24 April 2023. However, that was only returned in December. This is still outstanding.

The recommendation in the budget vote was that although the budget increased, the DHA capacity had remained low even though there was the consideration of increasing it by percent. The Committee recommended the employment of the youth in the digitisation project to be extended to increase capacity. The DHA, in response, indicated that additional allocation was given in October last year, especially on priority posts such as civic service but that was still only 40% of the 18 000 posts. The DHA submitted a second capacitation business case to National Treasury for an additional 3,000 posts at the cost of R1.4 billion.

The broad appointed booking system has been expanded for the collection of documents and is being made available in all 202 modernised offices.

The Department has finalised 530 queries between April and September, and 210 are still pending. Regarding dealing with long queues, the Department’s hybrid access model has been identified and will be executed over the short, medium and long term. The Department is further budgeting for additional mobile units in the coming years including expanding self-service kiosks to enable clients to act directly with the Department.

There is notable progress in the modernisation of rural offices to phase out green identity documents including all offices being upgraded, having a booth application process which is a small area for capturing photos and processing documents that can fit into a smaller infrastructure.

On the public-private partnership for the reason for facilitating visa services. It was mentioned that the bid for the appointment of a transaction advisor failed several times. On some occasions, no applications from suitable candidates were received.

On the BMA, 400 additional law enforcement border guards are undergoing training, and 50 maritime guards will be deployed in the medium term.

Regarding the IEC providing potential funding for independent candidates, National Treasury approved the retention of surpluses from previous years to the value of R1.5 billion to be rolled over for these matters including the increased size of the ballot boxes.

There has been a recommendation that the Department should strive towards a clean audit opinion and better adhere to the in-year audit plans, particularly the impairment of departmental revenue in collecting penalties. Further, the progress on audit plans and the Auditor-General management letter must form part of all future quarterly performance reporting to the Committee. The Department has reported on this in the quarterly reports but ongoing oversight on this is important.

Further recommendations point out that although the IEC’s work is commendable, the IEC should work with key stakeholders to ensure that the annual target of registering 10 million eligible South Africans to participate in the election.

A total of R2.9 billion over the medium term was promised for establishing the BMA, however, the budget presentation indicated that it only received R168 million in 2022 and R278 million for the force for the first quarter of 2023. That equates to only 15% in allocation. It would be expected that at least twice that much funding would be allocated at this stage.

The BMA establishment of staff consultation revealed certain transitional issues regarding employee benefits and salaries that must be addressed and reported to the Committee as soon as possible to ensure that officials are not further adversely affected. The Committee Chairperson had been in consultation with the BMA and the minister on this matter to ensure that it was effectively resolved.

Discussion

The Chairperson invited those who had comments before the adoption of the report.

Ms M Molekwa (ANC) thought the report was compiled comprehensively. She moved for the adoption of the report.

Mr A Roos (DA) also welcomed the report. He indicated that the one thing he does not see in the report is no item regarding the 2022 BRRR, whereby the Committee would refer the GPW audit outcomes, implementation of recommendations and loss of data to SCOPA for further oversight. Was this referred to SCOPA? If not, it should be part of the outstanding items from the 2022 BRRR.

Mr Pillay appreciated the report and the efforts made by the Content Advisor to capture everything succinctly. There should be an addition to the SITA matters, and this is something that has previously been raised, year after year, but there seems to be no clear plan for this. He voiced concerns about some of the DHA responses and some contradictory responses which could be alarming. He was pleased that this was at least captured in the report. He said the report could be adopted.

The Chairperson indicated that given that there was a Ministerial Advisory Panel about the recommendations that were not yet implemented, but presented before the Committee. There was a consideration not to proceed with the GPW referral to SCOPA. Hence, a decision was taken to appoint a panel. This was why the matter was not referred to SCOPA. The Committee should oversee the work of the panel.

The Chairperson referred to the section of the report dealing with the IEC. He questioned whether the report accurately captured that if a citizen does not have documents, they are no longer a citizen eligible to vote.

In response, Mr Salmon said that this was a recommendation raised by one of the Members of the Committee on the difficulty of citizens who are abroad being unable to vote due to the lack of documents. This recommendation could be reformulated to say that the relevant stakeholders, including the IEC, should work better to make sure that the issue of documents of South African citizens abroad is addressed before the elections.

The Committee adopted the report with the amendments. See report here https://pmg.org.za/tabled-committee-report/5509/

The meeting was adjourned.