Programme Director Mr Robert Masambo,
Managers and staff members from the Department of Finance and other provincial departments
Prof Giel Nieman (Head of Department, University of Pretoria)
Mr Wesley Niemann (Programme Manager – Chair of Logistics, University of Pretoria)
Phyllis Boshoff (Senior Coordinator – Continuing Education University of Pretoria)
Esteemed graduates
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Mr Jeff Erlichman quoting from the Executive Vice President and Counsel for the Professional Services Council, the national trade association of the government professional and technical services industry, Mr Alan Chvotkin, in his article titled “industry faces challenges in government contracting”, had this to say;
“From an industry standpoint, the frustration with workforce issues is two-fold. One is the core competency of the workforce in government contracting generally. Secondly, the mindset and culture of government has not changed, though the circumstances demand it especially when it comes to procurement. I did it this way last time, so I am doing it the same way this time whether it makes sense or not’ brings frustration from contractor partners”.
In his special report on procurement, Mr Chvotkin refers to American state procurement practitioners as buyers who should know the rules and regulations to do their job well and should recognise that they are carrying out a huge customer service function helping agencies (departments) meet their needs. Good procurement comes from having a well trained and well compensated federal acquisition workforce, he said.
Programme director, it is against this background that the ANC-led government has introduced a number of skills development programmes such as the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (Asgisa) and the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) to address the catastrophic challenge of skills shortage faced by our government.
In a statement released by the Presidency on the two documents in September 2008, AsgiSA identified skills shortage as one of the binding constraints, and Jipsa is an overarching framework to deal with the skills shortage comprehensively. The Jipsa Work Placement Programme ensures that all available skills within the economy are effectively utilised.
With JIPSA, the country will only focus on scarce and critical skills without which we cannot deliver on our AsgiSA commitments and targets. However, JIPSA must make a sustainable, not a superficial, intervention and relate with our universities, schools and the FET colleges which have a much broader mandate.
JIPSA will support the alignment of Further Education and Training (FET) colleges and Higher Education institutions in their work of producing graduates who can be employable in both the public and private sectors.
On the same note ladies and gentlemen, the Minister of Finance, Honourable Pravin Gordhan spoke at length on the need to transform our supply chain management systems in government. Addressing Parliament during the presentation of the Medium Term Expenditure Budget speech yesterday, he said;
“Clean administration is also the central principle in our approach to supply chain management and ensuring value for money in government procurement of goods and services.
The National Treasury has been working closely with other departments and agencies to combat fraud and corruption, under the leadership of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Ant-Corruption chaired by Minister Chabane.
He also introduced some measures that seek to improve our systems. This includes the increasing of the monitoring capability in government, aimed at early detection of fraud.
Departments and government agencies will be required to provide specific information to the Treasuries on their procurement practices. Where necessary, the cash disbursements process of government agencies will be temporarily assumed by Treasuries thereby ensuring that only valid contracts are honoured and government is charged a fair price.
Public officials who assist in tender fraud will also be liable for resultant losses incurred by government. Measures are required to ensure that officials who have breached the buying rules should not remain under suspension, drawing full benefits, while investigations drag on for years.
Programme director, In order to effectively implement these initiatives mentioned by the Minister, we have to improve our human capacity within government institutions.
It is for this reason that we converge here today to celebrate yet another milestone within the skills development sector that is in line with those measures. In 2008, the department reached an agreement of a partnership with the University of Pretoria to improve our provincial skills base in order to address some challenges identified in the asgisa-jipsa documents and attain the skills and professionalism mentioned by Chvotkin.
Ladies and gentlemen, today we are pleased as government to introduce to you our 28 graduates who successfully completed a certificate programme in Supply Chain and Assets management offered by the University of Pretoria.
The group is part of the more than 500 procurement practitioners employed across the provincial departments, municipalities and public entities with various skills and knowledge base.
The promulgation of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) of 1999, Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) of 2003, various Supply Chain Management and other Treasury Regulations and related policies has brought about drastic changes in the manner in which government procurement is done. This has resulted in a greater demand for innovative ways of discharging government business, particularly the implementation of the e-government concept.
As government, we therefore, decided to commit more resources in the training of our employees in order to capacitate our human capital base which in turn, helps to fast-track service delivery to our constituencies. It gives us pleasure today that we are well on-track in attaining these goals.
We further introduced systems such as the staff rotation - where we rotate staff members within the supply chain unit in order to discourage cases where staff members collude with service providers in defrauding the state; security vetting to all officials responsible for state procurement to ensure that we enlist the correct people in this unit and the rolling out of the electronic procurement system which will indicate to us how many transactions took place on a daily basis so that we can immediately deal with deviations.
In order to address the challenges identified by Chvotkin in his theory on the challenges faced by the industry in government procurement, the provincial government has adopted a policy of paying for services rendered within thirty days.
This approach is in line with a call by President Jacob Zuma to do things differently in government and ensure that we rid the public service of all corrupt practices.
Programme director, I am mentioning all these to caution our graduates that as we entrust them with public assets and finances, they should resist all temptations of engaging in corrupt activities or falling prey to book makers. We have empowered them so that they can improve our systems and help us deliver on our mandates.
Let me take this opportunity to congratulate you on this achievement. As they say “knowledge is the power”, the question remains; what are you doing with that power. It takes patriotism and diligence as opposed to accumulation of wealth and material gain, to be in the public service. May God give you wisdom and strength to serve selflessly and become the champions of the masses of our people, especially the poor and the marginalised. Remember, your province needs you.
We hope that this intervention will go a long way in realising the goals and objectives set out by government in asgisa-jipsa initiatives and ensure that we constantly observe all measures introduced by Minister Gordhan without deviations.
Lastly, I would like to thank the hard work and commitment of our partner - University of Pretoria, in ensuring that this partnership works. In particular, our appreciations go to Mr Wesley Niemann and Ms Phyllis Boshoff for their continued support and serve as our strategic point of entry to the University. Not forgetting all lecturers that presented different topics during the training.
As I conclude, Prof. Giel Nieman, we salute you for your sterling support and becoming a friend of our province. Your contribution in this process ensured that this programme became a rewarding success.
I thank you!
Source: Mpumalanga Department of Finance
