Honourable Minister of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), Mr. Collins Chabane,
Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Appropriations,
Honourable Members of the Committee and other Members,
Esteemed guests,
Comrades and friends,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Let me start with the quotation by Raanan Weitz, one of the renowned economist, “While humanity shares one planet, it is a planet on which there are two worlds, the world of the rich and the world of the poor”. It is important for our people to know and understand why things happen as they do, and how and what their government which they voted for is doing to change their lives for better.
As Michael P Todaro and Stephen C Smith, 8th edition of their prescribed book on Economic development: “As people throughout the world awake each morning to face a new day, they do so under the very different circumstances. Some live in comfortable homes with many rooms.
They have more than enough to eat are well clothed and healthy, and they have a reasonable degree of financial security. Others and these, constitute more than three-fourths (80%) of the earth’s 7 billion people, are much less fortunate. They may have little or no shelter and an inadequate food supply. Their health is poor, they often cannot read or write, they are often unemployed, and their prospects for a better life are uncertain at best.
This is a true reflection of the lives for the people of Africa, Latin America and Asia, which they experience daily and is impacted upon by the current developments of the 2008 economic meltdown and the Euro-Zone crisis But as the caring government led by the African National Congress (ANC), we endeavour to ensure that our people have shelter, food supply, health and social services, water, sanitation, housing and security.
A Ugandan woman is quoted saying “When one is poor, she has no say in public, she feels inferior, and she has no food, so there is famine in her house; no clothing, and no progress in her family”. However, in South Africa there are multi platforms for the poor people to express themselves.
In response to the call for a more responsive, interactive and effective government, our President His Excellency Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, launched the Presidential Hotline in 2009. The Hotline aims to provide a mechanism for citizens to interact directly with the President about service delivery matters. Only in South Africa where citizens have direct access to the President through the Hotline.
Honourable members today, two and a half years later, the Presidential Hotline has is indeed become an important monitoring and evaluation tool to gauge the quality of service delivery by the various arms of government and state owned institutions. People call in their numbers and tell us what their concerns.
There are more than 130 000 cases logged at present and the resolution rate is more than 80%. This is a resolution rate that we can be proud of, given that we started from a low base of 39% in November 2009. Since its inception, the Presidential Hotline has made a difference in the lives of many South Africans.
For example, the Hotline has facilitated the unblocking of delayed pensions and it has ensured that actions are taken when community members alert us to cases that require the intervention of social welfare service. We are a caring government that serves the needs of the poor, the ordinary South Africans, and others who have issues to raise with government.
Honourable Members after the Hotline received more than 8 000 complaints and queries on the Johannesburg Metro billing system, as The Presidency and DPME, we responded, and undertook a visit to the Metro of Johannesburg to engage with the leadership and to assess the situation and identify bottlenecks.
The Metro leadership assured us that their current interventions will bring positive relief to many citizens who have voiced their concerns. The issues raised by both rich and poor, black and white citizens of Johannesburg are on various issues such as the billing challenges, the responsiveness which is perceived as slow or inadequate, the long queues at their service points, the rate of turn-around strategy that is non-existing and the uncaring officials who do not apply the Batho-Pele principles. We are currently assessing and monitoring the situation and besides the unannounced visits that are being carried out, we will be going back to Johannesburg Metropolitan to get a feedback on progress made to resolve the matter.
Honourable Members, there are good stories to be told about the usefulness of the Hotline to ordinary South Africans. More recently, a caller complained that her mother was receiving a foster care grant for her two grandsons.
The grant expired in March 2010 and she went to renew it at SASSA but she was told that there had been no renewal forms available since March 2010. The officials at the Hotline referred this case to the national SASSA office, and this resulted in them sending a national official and a social worker to visit the household.
After observing the dire poverty that this family was living in and they found that the children suffered from trauma after the death of their parents and that the family did not have enough food, only surviving sometimes with the help of their neighbours. The children did not have uniform and lunch food and were reluctant to attend school. The family was immediately assisted by The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) and the Department of Social Development. She was very grateful for all the assistance the family received.
It is clear from this case that the Hotline represents our determination to do things differently in government. This and other stories reflect the importance of the role played by the Presidential Hotline in addressing the needs of ordinary South Africans. In addition, from this and other stories, we are able to identify some service delivery trends and key challenges that should be unblocked by various spheres of government.
The management of the Presidential Hotline was transferred to the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation in October last year. This department will pay special attention to this valuable monitoring mechanism and ensure that its effectiveness is improved.
Honourable members, in the budget vote speech last year, we undertook to place more emphasis on ‘on-site monitoring of frontline service delivery’. I am pleased to announce that since June 2011, we have conducted 122 unannounced monitoring visits in five provinces, Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Free State and Northern Cape. The monitoring teams consist of staff from DPME as well as staff from the Offices of the Premiers. We monitored the quality of service delivery in selected offices of SASSA, Home Affairs, drivers’ license centres, health facilities, courts and schools.
During each of these visits, we interviewed community users and staff and produced a score card with suggested improvements. We reported the findings to Cabinet during February 2012 and we are working with the relevant departments to ensure that they act on the findings from these monitoring visits.
These monitoring visits highlighted that the service delivery improvement programmes of government are starting to show positive results – we have found examples of service sites where there are dedicated public servants who are committed to good service and who, in spite of limited resources, do good work in serving the public. But, there are still facilities where the quality of service being experienced by citizens is unacceptable.
Honourable Members, this year, we aim to monitor more than 150 new sites in all 9 provinces. We have included municipal customer service centres in our list of sites to be monitored. We are hard at work in ensuring that service delivery improvement is given the attention it needs.
We are committed to ensuring a better life for all as we continue with the programmes of the year. We will focus our attention on the quality of the services delivered. Most of the protests in the townships are about services we delivered since 1994 and due to lack or inadequate maintenance plan most of them are collapsing.
There are also new challenges such as the ‘toilets sagas and sanitation’, which will become our focus. We want to know and understand the challenges with the view to correct the wrongs and fix the problems as we work with local and provincial government spheres and the other departments relevant to the issues.
The people have spoken. They are speaking on the Presidential Hotline and other democratic means such as protests and demonstrations. We will however, plea with all South Africans to use the freedom of expression in a responsible manner. We strongly condemn the torching, the burning and the destruction of properties. Know, that when you burn a school, a clinic, a library, a community hall and destroy the infrastructure, you are denying yourselves a service.
Honourable Members, working together we can indeed do more to realise our common vision of a better and more prosperous nation. As the President mentioned in his 2010 State of the Nation Address, this administration will endeavour to work, harder, smarter and faster, and, on putting people first.
In conclusion, I wish to thank Minister Collins Chabane for his leadership and guidance. Thank the Department PME Director General Mr Sean Phillips and his management for their dedication and support. Finally I would like to thank the entire staff in my office and all members of the Standing Committee.
I thank you!
