Question NW982 to the Minister of Tourism
06 April 2023 - NW982
Matumba, Mr A to ask the Minister of Tourism
(a) On what date did the tenure of the previous Tourism Transformation Council of South Africa (TTCSA) expire, (b) what are the reasons she did not appoint a new TTCSA on time, (c) what progress has been made in appointing the new TTCSA since the closing date of nominations on 30 November 2022, (d) how did her department advance and track transformation in the sector without the TTCSA in place and (e) what progress was made in implementing programmes that were presented by the previous TTCSA to the Portfolio Committee on Tourism?
Reply:
(a) I have been informed that the previous Tourism Transformation Council of South Africa (TTCSA) expired on 30 June 2022.
(b)
This process ensued before I took office.
However, I have been informed that after the closing date, the Department embarked on process to capture the nominations and to recommend a selection committee to make recommendations on the suitability of candidates for appointment.
It then came to light that some nominations may have not been successfully delivered to the Department because the email system of the Department went down during the period when the call for nomination was open.
The failure of the email system on the process for the submission of nomination was investigated. It was found that the GroupWise database of the Department got corrupted and prevented the delivery of some emails to the Department.
The email outages towards the closing date of the nominations and subsequent loss of emails was found to have impacted negatively on the nomination process for new members of the TTCSA.
It was evident some nominations could not have reached the Department which would then render the nominations process unfair, unless nominations were opened again to remedy the situation.
Approval to start a new process to call for nominations was granted on 9 September 2022.
(c)
Following approval to re-advertise calls for the nominations of new TTCSA members, the Department of Tourism sent adverts in the main newspapers with national coverage detailing the requirements, and the closing date for nominations was 30 November 2022.
The matter was not concluded by the previous Minister. I have not been consulted by the Department on the new process
(d)
I am informed that before the end of the previous Council’s term in June 2022, the TTCSA, in partnership with the Department of Tourism, appointed a service provider to conduct an annual survey to measure the extent of transformation in the tourism sector across all the three tourism sub-subsectors, namely (1) Accommodation; (2) Travel and (3) Hospitality as well as covering all nine provinces.
The Department established the Tourism B-BBEE Sector Transformation Directorate, which also serves as a Secretariat to the TTCSA. The directorate continued with the research work to gauge transformation levels in the sector.
(e)
I have been informed that the Department conducted policy advocacy presentations on the Amended Tourism B-BBEE Sector Code to various tourism stakeholders in various provinces to create and broaden awareness.