The Minister of Public Service and Administration, Mr Richard Baloyi and members of his staff today made a presentation to the KwaZulu-Natal Cabinet on issues affecting organisational design principles and processes.
This is part of Mr Baloyi’s two-day visit to the province which will see him pay a visit to service delivery centres and also addressing public service employees. In his presentation, Mr Baloyi said a number of concerns have been raised around delays in the process from when submissions are made to his office to getting approval, to the filling of vacant posts in public service.
“Some MECs send their organisational structure proposals directly to the office of the national minister – which is not wrong – but we are going to propose a process which will see the Premiers of the provinces paying a more pronounced role in this regard,” he said.
Mr Baloyi said there has been a tendency by departments to inflate their staffing needs, in most cases, where posts have not even been budgeted for.
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“You cannot ask for a structure to be approved with the hope that you will find the money somewhere to fund those posts once they’ve been approved.”
He also raised an alarm on the use of consultants to come up with organisational structures, which in most cases are not in line with public service needs.
“The departments will have spend millions of rands in some cases on consultancy fees, but the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) staff will have to step in and correct the shortcomings in the structures,” he said.
He said the DPSA is considering a protocol which will dictate that consultants can only be engaged after the approval of the minister of public service.
Finance MEC Ina Cronje said positions that are approved should have an indication from Treasury that these are budgeted for.
“There are provinces where 1 000 posts were filled without any budget allocations,” she said.
Cronje also said there are serious constraints will all government departments due to wage negotiation agreements and occupational specific dispensation requirements that have not been budgeted for.
In response, Mr Baloyi said the needs to be a relook of how wage negotiations are conducted.
“You have to bite the bullet and say to unions ‘we are not going to have negotiations’, or we have to streamline the process of budgeting and wage negotiations because you cannot do your budget and then have wage negotiations,” her said.
In a separate report, Cronje gave a report on the cost implications of the 2010/11 wage agreement.
In her report, Cronje said the Provincial Treasury has calculated the shortfall to be caused by the wage agreement to R446.156 million. This is after the agreed wage increase was 1.5 per cent over what was budgeted.
She said this calculation excluded the impact of the wage increment on the employees of the public entity Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, as they are not on Persal. Their salaries are impacted on by these increases though.
The Department of Health also indicated that the salary increases have an impact on the amount transferred to non-government organisations.
Cronje said there are discussions on-going with National Treasury on the possibility of funding the shortfall. She said some departments have also reported that they may be able to cover the shortfall from savings or reallocations in their budgets.
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Public Service Minister Richard Baloyi visits KwaZulu-Natal
Province