I was back at my post as a parliamentary monitor after an interval of five years. My first Committee meeting was a briefing from the Department of Water Affairs to the Portfolio Committee of Water, the latter consisting of brand new members. It appeared as though the entire Department and all its entities had come to grace our parliamentary presence, just in case one of them would have to respond to a question, which no one else but they alone could answer.
And so after many minutes of introductions, and briefings by a diligent content advisor and a diffident researcher, the Department's presentation was finally underway. One hour into the proceedings we had barely made a dent in the content, as pointed out by a rather alarmed Chair. We were being assailed by a tidal wave of information, the Department’s length and breadth seemed to cover the entire subcontinent of Africa and we were being regaled, or should I say drowned, in details of programmes, sub programmes, entities to be established, already established and proto-established.
Goals in alignment with national plans and outcomes in alignment with… well, other plans, were cross referenced and highlighted. The budgets, the Strategic Plan and Annual Performance Plan were broken down in different ways for further edification, according to programme, funding, area, region and cluster…until we were all quite overwhelmed and paralysed by the volume and magnitude of it all.
The Members and Chair fought back valiantly. Why had documents not been submitted in good time in order to allow for study and absorption of all this information? Why was the information on one slide not in agreement with the one in the document pack? Could there be a follow up meeting to go through the annual report at greater leisure; could the Department please stop the bus and could the Committee please have a background meeting? Ahhh yes, this was the same Parliament I had monitored more than five years ago. Same challenges, different members.
By Natalie Bossi, PMG Monitor
Comments
Keep comments free of racism, sexism, homophobia and abusive language. People's Assembly reserves the right to delete and edit comments
(For newest comments first please choose 'Newest' from the 'Sort by' dropdown below.)