His Excellency President of the Republic of South Africa, Mr JG Zuma
Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe
Ministers and Deputy Ministers
Chairpersons of Portfolio Committees
Honourable Members
Honoured guests
Friends and comrades
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen
I stand here before you on this august occasion, still in mourning for our stalwart and dedicated soldier of our struggle for the emancipation of our people. I stand here to give salute and tribute to our beloved mother who left us just yesterday, uMama Albertina Sisulu. Our tears are still very fresh and the wounds too deep to heal instantly.
uMama Albertina was the epitome of selflessness. She was always willing to get her hands dirty in the name of helping others. It is therefore befitting that we should follow her example by ensuring that quality service delivery is the order of the day in our localities.
We have just come out of the local government elections where once again, South Africans of all creed and colour, came out in their numbers to demonstrate their passion and commitment to this democratic dispensation as was born in 1994 through the ballot.As a befitting tribute to uMama wethu, we should continue with much gusto to address historical, social and economic factors which limited access to services to our people.
Today, I am once again privileged to participate for the first time in this budget vote of The Presidency. The executive has made a firm commitment to improving the quality and standard of service delivery across all spheres of government permeating through all organs of state.
At the heart of our monitoring and evaluation system is the consolidation of all service improvement initiatives into a single, seamlessly integrated service delivery model for the whole country, underpinned by an effective corporate governance instrument in the form of service delivery agreements executed by various clusters and ministries together with their provincial and local government counterparts. We are deeply encouraged that this system is beginning to yield results in the form of discernible outcomes.
Once more, it is critical to highlight some of the strategic interventions that we intend to do in ensuring that our people receive quality service delivery at all levels of government.
In ensuring that our mandate is clear and that there is coordination and synergy between national, provincial and local government, we have now visited seven provinces. Tomorrow, I am visiting the Western Cape Executive Council to discuss this coordination and synergy so that there is focus and impact on what we do as government.
In almost all these provinces that we visited, we identified the following issues, amongst others:
- Coordination of our work as a department with the Planning Commission
- Reporting standards in all spheres of government
- Rationalisation and reporting standards at local government level
- Efficiency and coordination of MinMecs
During our departmental budget vote on 8 June 2011, we indicated that the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government has developed a nerve centre that is assisting them to monitor both financial information (poor spending, non-spending, including overspending) and non-financial information (annual performance plans including departmental strategic plans).
Their government gets prompt helicopter view by just pressing the button and is rightly placed in the office of the Premier. I must say their system works and we would like to congratulate the Premier, Honourable Dr Mkhize and his team for displaying political leadership.
The President has spoken about local government on several occasions and this time we need action. In our meetings a few months ago we interacted with various stakeholders, including the National House of Traditional Leadership. We emphasised the importance of working together in monitoring services at local level.
We are aware that the Department of Traditional Affairs is planning a national summit to address differences between Councillors and Traditional leaders. We encourage all our councillors and traditional leaders to work very closely for the betterment of our people.
We must indicate that The Presidency will not rest until we progress on the five strategic objectives of Local Government Turn Around Strategy (LGTAS) developed and adopted by government in 2009.
Madam Speaker, we have met with South African Local Government Association (SALGA) because monitoring and evaluation of municipalities must involve relevant stakeholders like SALGA. During our meeting in March 2011, we agreed to work very closely and monitor local government programmes together without fail. We are planning to meet MuniMecs to ensure that our monitoring and evaluation strategy at local government is intact and the above LGTAS objectives are met and evaluated at that level. We shall monitor all special projects with zeal and character, for example Operation Hlasela by Premier’s office in Free State.
We strongly believe that their strategic focus has a potential of changing lives our people and improve financial management.
Once again, the focus of monitoring is on the targets relating to service delivery quality in the outcome 12 delivery agreement, namely customer satisfaction, unit costs of services and other key customer oriented indicators, such as waiting times in queues and response times. Therefore, we shall continue interacting with stakeholders, citizens and all members of civil society. We shall not be trapped to a desktop approach to monitoring; our approach is active participation, direct to citizens. We shall never monitor government services sitting in our offices.
Honourable members, this system has enabled us to accurately measure the impact of our plans on the citizenry and to hold accountable the various implementing authorities to the commitments the African National Congress has made at the last national elections.
It is fitting that this budget vote takes place on the eve of the thirty fifth (35th) anniversary of the 16 June 1976 uprising.Today’s youth activism is directed towards the successful eradication of poverty, unemployment, under development and HIV and AIDS. While the youth of 1976 fought for freedom and the creation of a democratic state, today’s youth is focused on personal and the country’s economic development.
We therefore dare not fail our youth. Our resolve to improve the lives of our people for the better has never been greater and we remain steadfast in our commitment to accelerating the economic emancipation of our people.
The concept of regular, unannounced visits to service delivery centres like hospitals, schools, driving licence testing centres, home affairs offices and municipal offices will become an integral part of our day to day system of monitoring and evaluation of service delivery. This, we believe, will go a long way towards fostering and intensifying face to face and unmediated engagements with our communities and bringing government to the people.
Honourable members, it is through this process that we also receive proposals from the members of the public. Although these take the form of surprise visits, we also engage with the management of the service delivery points both before and after the visits.
The aim is to provide them with useful toolkits to monitor and improve service delivery. The aim of frontline service delivery monitoring is to both affirm good performance and assist departments, municipalities and entities to improve service delivery points which are performing poorly.
Government Communication and Information Systems (GCIS)
GCIS continues to strengthen provincial and local government communication by ensuring concrete communication initiatives for effective provincial and local government communication, which includes intensification of face to face and unmediated engagements with communities, localising national content everyday.
Media Development and Diversity
Government remains committed to a strong and diverse media, which will support nation building as well as efforts to deepen, consolidate, defend and strengthen our democracy, social cohesion and good governance.
The MDDA rests with this responsibility.
Presidential Hotline
The Presidency is currently working with other departments and spheres of government to address issues raised with the President by citizens through the Presidential Hotline. We follow through all issues raised and where necessary visit citizens in their communities to interact with them face to face. This ANC government has a responsibility to respond to all the needs of our people, regardless of their geographic positions.
As Minister Chabane indicated, last year we reported that ‘we are in the process of reviewing the hotline’. Indeed I must say we working hard to make sure that it works well for us as The Presidency and for our people.
We are in the process of establishing an African learning network, which will be kick-started with an African Conference on M&E later this year in conjunction with some academic institutions and other international organisations.
Issues raised by the President in his State of the Nation Address
We are working with Department of the Public Service and Administration (DPSA) on the filling of vacant funded posts and we have done a situational assessment which gives us a picture of the interventions required. In summary, the results to date indicate that government has made good progress in the filling of vacant funded posts.
With regards to monitoring job creation, we have been working closely with the Department of Economic Development to put in place a range of mechanisms to monitor the impact of the state on job creation. We are also working with Statistics South Africa, which collects information from the private sector on job creation. We are confident that we will be able to give a comprehensive report later this year.
Lastly, let me take this opportunity to thank the President for the opportunity to interact with our people. Together we can build better communities and serve our people with pride and dignity.
I thank you.
