"Secondment" Bill bulldozed through Parliament?

Most Members of the Democratic Alliance walked out of the National Assembly yesterday as the vote to adopt the Public Administration Management (PAM) Bill took place. According to the DA, the Bill has been rushed through Parliament, evident by the fact that public hearings on the Bill were held on the morning of Friday, 7 March, only for the Bill to be passed by the Committee that very same afternoon.

At Friday’s public hearings, the Committee heard a submission from the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU) on clause 6 of the PAM Bill, which speaks to the secondment of government employees. The clause seeks to address the shortage of skills in certain areas of the country, most especially in rural areas. It means that if there is a shortage of skills in a municipality, government officials from any sphere of government (national and provincial) can be transferred there.

Concerns around this clause were two-fold. Firstly, were government officials given a choice about secondment, or would this be enforced? Secondly, the legislation had to clarify that if an official is transferred, the transfer had to be time-bound i.e. secondment cannot be enforced for an unspecified amount of time.

In the afternoon, after a brief response about the public submissions by the Minister of Public Service and Administration, the Committee moved to the formal stage of clause-by-clause approval of the Bill.

The DA expressed concern that particularly Western Cape Provincial Government’s submission had not been properly entertained during the processing of the Bill.

The DA’s Nicolaas du Toit was concerned about the lack of proper consideration of the submissions. The Western Cape had written just over 60 paragraphs in its submission and there were good points from other submissions he felt needed to be included in the Bill. The time seemed too short to do justice to the submissions.

Even though the Minister for Public Services and Administration, Lindiwe Sisulu, had assured Members of the Opposition in a previous meeting that transfers and secondments had to be mutually accepted, the DA was still sceptical and proposed that it was not good enough to address this concern in the regulations. They wanted to amend clause 6 of the Bill to at least state that secondments would be done “as prescribed” in the regulations.

The Minister repeated that the Western Cape Provincial Government's concerns would be addressed in the regulations.

While du Toit doubted whether the rest of the Members had even read the Western Cape’s submission, the DA’s Sarel Marais objected to the clause-by-clause reading of the Bill, saying that the DPSA should have taken some time to consider the public submissions from the hearings and decide whether they could be accommodated or not. There was also the concern that the next government administration would not uphold the promise that secondment would not be enforced. There was nothing in the Bill to prevent this.

Marais questioned how DPSA could respond credibly to the submissions given that they had just been made a few hours before. He said it appeared as if the Department was unwilling to change anything in the current Bill.

The Minister took exception to the DA’s insinuation that the DPSA had not consulted widely enough during the processing of the Bill. Her justification was that the Bill had been processed by the National Council of Provinces first and so had gone through thorough hearings in each of the nine provinces as well as prior to it being tabled in Parliament, it had gone through NEDLAC and many other consultations.

When it became clear that the Minister and the Committee would not entertain his plea for further debate and amendments to be made to the Bill, du Toit recused himself from the meeting, saying he had no further business being at that meeting. Marais followed as well, shortly before the Committee voted on the Bill.

Yesterday, when majority of the DA Members walked out of the National Assembly, the Bill was adopted by 233 votes in favour with 20 against. The Bill has been sent to the President for assent.

Read the full report here:

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