Hon Chairperson, the Department of Labour's first priority should be to help create jobs for more people. In short, Minister Oliphant should be putting more people to work and, in order to do so, she must do two things: get her department functioning properly and enact the necessary labour reforms to create more jobs. On both fronts, the Minister has failed.
I would like to focus the attention of this House on the turnaround strategy for the Compensation Fund and Information and Communications Technology, ICT, strategy for the department. These programmes are vital indicators of the effectiveness of the department. Unfortunately, nearly R2 billion has to be spent over 10 years to address the IT needs of the department through a public-private partnership with the Siemens company, but there is very little to show for the money and the effort.
As for the Compensation Fund, I have a list of cases of frustrated people who have turned to the DA for help with their Compensation Fund and UIF problems. In my assessment, the department is failing to effect successful turnarounds in these vital programmes and others, constraining the effectiveness of the Department of Labour in general.
On top of that, the Minister is engaged in a process to review our labour legislation to make it even more constraining than it already is. This will kill jobs and increase unemployment. We cannot support an appropriation to a Minister and a department involved in such activities. For these reasons, the DA cannot support the budget. [Interjections.]