N Mapisa-Nqakula: Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs

23 August 2006

Chairperson
Honourable members
Colleagues and friends!

Thank you very much for allowing us yet another opportunity to share with
the committee and report back on certain aspects pertaining to the work of the
department.

Allow me from the onset, chairperson, to apologise for the fact that I will
not be able to sit here for the entire duration of this meeting as I had to
excuse myself from a Cabinet meeting that is currently ongoing where we are
presenting a number of bills for Cabinet’s consideration. I am however
confident that the team that I am going to introduce to you here is more than
capable of handling our presentation as well as to address any of the issues
that might arise from the presentation. I will most certainly still be
available to engage further with the committee should you require this from us
at any time in the future.

Honourable Members will remember that at the time of the presentation of our
budget vote in the National Assembly, we had made an undertaking to take steps
to address some of the glaring shortcomings of the department including those
that were observed and raised by you as members of this committee.

In the first instance, I would like to thank all members of the committee
for the sharp and frank manner in which you had raised your concerns with
regard to some of the deficiencies in the manner in which the department has
been functioning.

Chairperson,

At the time when we presented our budget both to this portfolio committee
and to the National Assembly, the department faced some of your harshest
criticism in the manner in which we were discharging our duties as an organ of
state bestowed with a huge mandate to make an impact in the quality of lives of
our people.

At the time, we had not adequately satisfied the legal requirements for the
proper processing of our budget as we had failed to submit both our Annual
Report and plans timeously as required. The Auditor-General had given a
disclaimer opinion on our financial statements provided within the very report
that we had not been able to submit on time and as a result the patience of
both the public we serve, and that of Parliament, was wearing thin. It was
therefore incumbent upon us as leaders of the department to act decisively to
bring about the necessary intervention that would alleviate some of the
prevalent deficiencies within the systems of the department.

I had decided at the time to invoke the provisions of the Public Finance
Management Act (PFMA), section 6 (2) d and e, to invite the National Treasury
to come into the department to: (1) investigate our financial management
systems and (2) to assist in building capacity for improved management of our
financial resources.

After further consideration, we also felt that such an intervention has now
allowed us an opportunity to broaden the scope of areas of assistance, and as a
result I also invited the Department of Public Service and Administration
(DPSA) to form part of this intervention to look at areas of improving the
organisational efficiency of the department.

The intervention itself is therefore a joint project between our department,
the National Treasury, the DPSA as well as the Office of the Public Service
Commission (OPSC) driven by a committee of Directors-General (DGs) from these
departments and reporting to a ministerial committee consisting of the relevant
Ministers.

A dedicated leader of the intervention, Ms Odette Ramsingh from the OPSC,
has been seconded to the Department of Home Affairs on a full time basis for
the initial three months period of this work. She will be working together with
the DG of the department who for all intents and purposes remains the
Accounting Officer of the department as per his appointment in March last year.
During the period of the intervention, the two DGs will be working together and
reporting jointly to the committee of DGs, the Minister of Home Affairs and the
Ministerial Committee.

Teams from both the National Treasury and the DPSA/OPSC are already hard at
work assisting the department to overcome some of the difficulties we are
facing. The team and its leadership have been introduced to all members of
staff as well as to the senior managers of the department who have welcomed
this initiative and pledged their support and co-operation.

I will not go into the detail of the scope of the work of the intervention,
except to say that we had initially made an undertaking to report to you
regarding certain specific actions we would be taking in addressing some of
your concerns as raised during the presentation of the Budget. These were
mainly in relation to how we were going to address the concerns raised by the
Auditor General in his report. Our presentation today will serve in part to do
just that, but also to go beyond and report on the work that we are currently
doing to overhaul our systems and standard procedures of operations.

As indicated in my answer to questions in the National Council of Provinces
(NCOP), we are already seeing some fruits of this work as the current audit of
our financial statement has moved from a disclaimer to a qualified opinion. Of
course this means we still need to do more, but I am encouraged by the fact
that our financial controls are stabilising.

The team has been in the department for about two months now and they have
already made several observations and implemented certain action plans that
they will share with the committee. As part of this work, we are now in a
position to present our refined business plans based on the central thread of
enhancing our organisational performance for improved service delivery
levels.

Chairperson, I must say that like any situation in change management, this
process has not been easy. We are going through one of the most significant
phases in the transformation of the Department of Home Affairs, and we have had
to take some difficult decisions, in fact we will continue to be faced with
difficult decisions. I must say, however, Honourable Members, that with the
amount of progress we have made so far, I am more confident that this decision
that we took, however difficult, was the right decision.

It is for this reason that I am greatly thankful for the support that you
have given to this process and I am further inviting you to continue to offer
us this support during this transitional time. I am aware that you will not
merely offer us this support blindly, but that we should expect a vigorous and
robust engagement from you on our reports.

This vigilance and genuine concern that you have for the quality of service
we give to our people, can only serve to enhance our efforts. I invite you to
engage with the officials in a manner that assists us to identify areas where
we can make further improvements and to help us give practical expression to
the many commitments we have made to you and to the public we serve.

I will therefore leave you in the capable hands of the head of the
intervention team, Ms Odette Ramsingh and the DG, Mr Jeff Maqetuka to introduce
the rest of the team and make our presentation to you.

Thank you.

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Issued by: Ministry Of Home Affairs
23 August 2006
Source: Department of Home Affairs (http://www.dha.gov.za/)