N Mapisa-Nqakula: Home Affairs Budget presentation to Portfolio
Committee

26 May 2006

Chairperson
Honourable Members
Our Director General, Mzuvukile Maqetuka
DDGs and Senior Managers of our department

We are once again thankful to the Portfolio Committee for giving us an
opportunity to present our budget for its consideration before our presentation
to the National Assembly. I must particularly thank the Committee for your
understanding and patience with the department in allowing us to resolve the
issues pertaining to the finalization of the annual report for 2004/05.

I can assure the Committee that both the department and the Auditor
General’s office have gone through a tough and a lengthy process to get the
report finalised in terms of our joint undertaking before this committee.

Chairperson,

The process of bidding for this Budget started last year in June when I put
forward certain policy objectives that necessitated National Treasury to
consider allocating additional funds to finance such policy options. The policy
options were presented in a form of a budget request to the Medium Term
Expenditure Committee (MTEC) and accordingly approved in November 2005.

As we seek your support for this budget, we do so in the full knowledge that
if this budget is approved the department will have to seriously commit it to
address the challenge of ensuring that it spent wisely and derive value for
money in the improvement of the lives of the people we serve.

Chairperson and Honourable Members

The past year has been one of the most challenging for the department as it
represented the period within which the actual implementation of our programmes
started in earnest. This was after we had spent the first year of our term in
office establishing the necessary framework for the transformation of the
department to properly fulfil its mandate.

We have registered key achievements in this regard and we believe that the
department is well on course to stabilise and develop the necessary capacity
required to meet its objectives. This work has however also exposed certain
weaknesses that need to be addressed if we are to succeed in the overall
transformation and repositioning of the Department of Home Affairs. The budget,
therefore seeks to direct much needed resources to be deployed towards
addressing some of these key weaknesses. We have also ensured the alignment of
this budget to the strategic plan in order to allow for close monitoring of the
impact of our expenditure on service delivery objectives.

The Budget itself has been designed to cover seven key intervention areas
aimed at improving service delivery levels of the department. I put forward
these policy proposals to address the growing concern of the public about the
level of service delivery of the department.

I will outline in broad terms some of these key policy proposals and
intervention areas that form the basis of this budget:

1. People

Chairperson, One of the key challenges of the department has been the
inadequate levels of human resource capacity across the department. Over the
past two years we have made a scientific investigation of our organisational
establishment and its occupational levels for different categories of officials
both at head office and in our provinces. We have reported to this committee
that our new approved establishment has grown two fold compared to 2003 and
that funding for this establishment has been approved over a period of four
years ending 2008/09.

Of importance to note has been the need to make provision for much needed
capacity within our civic services branch that was initially left out of the
first investigation of the establishment.

We have therefore put forward a policy proposal that is aimed at ensuring
further enhancement of our human capital and have requested additional funding
above the baseline allocation to fund the establishment of the department in
critical areas such as provinces and in new missions abroad. Additional funds
requested in this regard were:

* R134 million for 2006/07
* R215,6 million for 2007/08
* R369,5 million for 2008/09

2. Infrastructure and Government printing works

The second critical policy option was in relation to the enhancement of the
building infrastructure to improve accessibility of the public to the services
of the department. We have since received the report of the study we have
commissioned last year in conjunction with Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research (CSIR) on the location of our offices. This is aimed at
ensuring that our roll out of office infrastructure takes into accounts the
distances and population densities. We also need to ensure that the location of
our offices as part of our service deliver model should support urban and rural
development strategies as well as service to Presidential nodal points as
identified by government.

This policy option also addresses the infrastructure requirements for the
Government Printing Works in preparation for its conversion to a state owned
enterprise. Additional funds requested for these areas were:

* R212,6m for 2006/07
* R122,6m for 2007/08
* R82,6 million for 2008/09

Hanis

Honourable members will be aware that most of the programmes that form part
of the Home Affairs National Identity System are now at advanced stage or
nearing completion. These include the population of Automated Fingerprint
Identification System (AFIS) through the conversion of over 40 million
fingerprints records. While we had targeted to complete this work by September
this year, I can safely share with the committee that we are within course to
finish before this target date.

Cabinet is still at this stage discussing outstanding issues relating to the
procurement model for the Smart Identity documents (SID) card and we are
certain that these discussions will be finalised soon. In this regard we have
made provision for the roll out of the process once we have the required go
ahead.

Additional funds provided for the HANIS project this year are:

R384,1 million for 2006/07
R96,1 million for 2007/08
Nil for 2008/09

Service delivery

Another key challenge that we face is in relation to our service delivery
improvement model. Due to service delivery challenges at our provincial offices
where our clients are receive services, it became essential to allocate
resources towards the overall improvement in the manner in which we serve our
people. Some of the initiatives in this regard will include the allocation of
further mobile units, and the implementation of the recommendations arising
from civic services survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council
(HSRC). The survey was aimed at identifying some of the gaps in the provision
of services to the citizens, including determining areas where the biggest
needs are. Additional resources will be allocated towards a more efficient ID
distribution strategy, queue management in our offices as well as the running
of the campaign on the rights of the client. It was therefore essential to
request additional:

* R115,8 million for 2006/07
* R97,16 million for 2007/08
* R99,2 million for 2008/09

Counter corruption

It is public knowledge that the department’s services are essential for the
life of the masses and therefore the department finds itself vulnerable to
certain syndicates and corrupt elements that hinder service delivery. The drive
to uproot corruption was inevitable and therefore necessitated bidding for
additional funding to address this fifth policy option.

What was requested in this regard as additional funds was:

* R26,8 million for 2006/07
* R37,8 million for 2007/08
* R34,9 million for 2008/09

Immigration services

The passing of the Immigration Amendment Act of 2004 necessitated the
fundamental transformation of our country’s immigration service. The
implementation thereof required an injection of resources into capacitating the
new structures and operations of the National Immigration Branch. We needed to
source additional funding to provide the world-class service in this area and
to ensure that the department is well capacitated to ensure that immigration
policy and its implementation can play a role in supporting national objectives
in the areas of development, economic growth, security and foreign policy.

Some of the key programmes in this regard will be in support of the work of
the Border Control Coordinating Committee (BCOCC), which is a multi
departmental structure tasked with overseeing the proper functions of all our
ports of entry under the governorship of the Department of Home Affairs. The
work of the BCOCC also includes the programme for the improvement of
infrastructure at the different ports of entry.

We also needed to make provision for the additional capacity that will be
required to deal with the anticipated influx of foreigners in 2009 and 2010
when the country would be hosting world sporting events. Additional funds
requested in this regard were:

* R62,4 million for 2006/07
* R59,5 million for 2007/08
* R63,4 million for 2008/09

Civic services

The final policy option that was brought forward to request for additional
funds was civic services. This is our biggest branch and one whose functions
affect the lives of our own citizens. Most of the options stated before such as
HANIS, Counter Corruption, infrastructure and people are also supporting the
well functioning of civic services and therefore additional funds requested for
civic services were limited to:
* R10,1 million for 2006/07
* R9,7 million for 2007/08
* R9,7 million for 2008/09

The total additional request for funds was therefore:

* R946 million for 2006/07
* R638,5 million for 2007/08
* R659,5 million for 2008/09

Chairperson and Honourable Members

I need to state that the law of economics dictates that economic resources
are scarce and therefore it is always the norm that the fiscus does not always
fund all needs due to a number of competing needs among government Departments
based on levels of priorities.

The department was eventually allocated additional funding according to what
the fiscus could allow and the overall additional allocation was:

* R173,1 million for 2006/07
* R233,8 million for 2007/08
* R781,5 million for 2008/09

The allocated additional funds resulted in the increase of the baseline
budget allocation that was debated last year for the outer years to:

* R2,8 billion for 2006/07
* R3,053 billion for 2007/08
* R3,742 billion for 2008/09

The budget shows a slight decline during the first year as compared to the
previous year’s budget of R3 billion but is eventually increasing in the two
outer years. The detailed explanation of these trends will be elaborated
further by the delegation of senior official who are present to engage you for
the rest of the day. Before I can handover to the Director General (DG) and
senior managers that are here to further elaborate on the Budget and the
Strategic Plan, I would like to address an important matter relating to the
tabling of our Annual Report.

I am aware that this is matter that the department has brief the committee
on several occasions, but it is important that we highlight a few issues in
this regard. I am particularly angered and disappointed by the audit opinion
that the department has received and have already directed the DG as the
accounting officer of the department to institute a process of dealing with all
the issues raised by the Auditor General in his report.

Firstly, chairperson, as a department we need to acknowledge that there
might have been situations where we had contributed to the delay by the team of
the Auditor General in finalizing this report. It is clear to me that certain
problems emerged during this particular audit that ranged from communication
lines to the need to provide documentation on time as well as the general
manner in which the two institutions related in terms of the work of conducting
the audit. These are matters that we are continuing to look into to get to the
bottom of such problems with a view of avoiding similar situations in the
future.

At the time when we started this audit, we realised there were major
problems with certain aspects of our financial administration, including
possibility of fraud. I asked the department to institute a forensic audit and
soon thereafter 12 officials were suspended on grounds of financial misconduct.
I am yet to receive the report of this investigation, which has now been
completed, and once I have studied its contents and recommendations I will
report to the committee in terms of any further steps we shall take to address
these weaknesses in the system.

Chairperson and Honourable members, at this stage I will hand over to the DG
and senior managers who will present to you the strategic plan that will lay
the foundation for a detailed presentation of the budget vote in terms of
figures.

Once more let me thank you for the opportunity.

Enquiries: Communication Directorate
Tel: (012) 810 8613

Issued by: Ministry of Home Affairs
26 May 2006
Source: Department of Home Affairs (http://www.home-affairs.gov.za)