(Budget vote debate in Parliament: Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation)
The overall failure of the ANC government and the apparent lack of planning raise serious questions about the functionality of the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation.
One of the Department's core mandates is to ensure that thorough research and fact-based studies are conducted to determine the impact of legislative amendments. At present, the standard of such socio-economic impact studies is extremely poor, as is evident in those done on the Employment Equity Amendment Bill and the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Amendment Bill, which were finalised in 2015 already, but were only recently submitted to Parliament. No changes that occurred in the past six years, which may have an impact on the legislation, are taken into account and the Compensation Fund has undergone two system changes in the interim.
Compiling expert research reports is of the utmost importance for effective public participation and legislative processes. However, when it comes to these reports, they fall far short of the recognised international standards.
The studies reek of propaganda and bias and do not provide objective data analyses or thorough financial impact assessments. The reports are not worth the paper they are printed on and it is a shame that the Department has approved them. There is an utter lack of quality.
There is no debate to be had about the serious lack of service delivery on all levels of government. From Home Affairs, where birth certificates are lost and applications for passports take months to be processed, to unemployment insurance and the Compensation Commissioner. On ground level, there is no garbage disposal and potholes are costing people their lives.
Hospitals are becoming more and more like morgues as even simple routine procedures could end up being life threatening. There is a shortage of medicine and equipment and during the current pandemic, essential gear was stored and forgotten in some storeroom or, worse, still, under a tarpaulin somewhere in the wind and rain.
Given the current state of affairs, it is incomprehensible that senior public officials were, until recently, still paid their full annual bonuses based on performance assessments. How is that even possible? The main function of this Department is to, through monitoring, identify any shortcomings in service delivery.
As the political heads of departments, ministers must ensure that there is proper service delivery, that corruption does not occur and that all the laws and regulations are complied with. This is, however, not what is currently happening. Ministers merely shift the blame for the poor performance to officials, like the directors-general, but at the same time, the ministers are the ones signing the good performance assessments so that those same officials are paid their full bonuses.
The performance of ministers and deputy ministers is also relevant. The ministers' performance agreements were only just finalised and published – but what will happen next? How and when will the President assess the ministers' performance? Will these assessments be disclosed and what will happen to the ministers who underperform? One of the main causes of the decline in South Africa is a lack of accountability. How are deputy ministers held accountable?
As a result of the failure of the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, the same mistakes are made in all departments without any accountability. This raises the question of whether there is any point in having such a department at all.
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