Chairperson, I thank the House and all the hon members who spoke this afternoon. One of my dear, and now late comrades, Steve Tshwete, had a wonderful phrase. He used to say, "You shouldn't praise a fish for swimming because it would die if it stopped swimming." I listened very carefully to the grudging support from some quarters of this House.
I want to say to the hon Harris and hon Ross that if the only things you can come up with are reruns of what you have raised before, then we are not in such a bad place, are we? We have heard all of this before. It is a rerun; it is like the SABC which still broadcasts the Cosby Show. It is exactly the same.
Let me deal with some of the issues they have raised. I think that in an area such as statistics and in the particular area that involves actuaries, there are always differences of opinion. It is an established fact and you do not have to look at the work done on census. Go and look at the modelling done for the Actuarial Society. Some of the individuals have actually been involved in differences of opinion even there. When this happens it does not come as a surprise. I think that what we have opted to do is not to have rows with the distinguished professors in public. There have been private discussions to persuade them, and those discussions involved a number of other people of the same craft who could look at numbers, methodology and persuade each other.
If you asked Statistics SA to have stand-up rows with the people who have been involved with the organisation, in the council and so on, over a long period, it would not be the style in which you would choose to operate. In respect of the issues of Dr Arrow and Ms Pistorius, I want to indicate that there is an incomplete disciplinary hearing and it would be incorrect of me to comment on those matters until the disciplinary hearing has been cleared. I think that in deference to somebody who is still a staff member, in the case of Ms Pistorius, I ask Parliament to allow those processes to run their course. It would be wrong to do it in any other way. In respect of the interns, the pay scales of interns are administered by the Department of Public Service and Administration, DPSA. I think that members who had been part of the oversight of Statistics SA for a longer period would know that in a different time the DPSA had also regulated pay scales for people who are temporarily employed for surveys and staff like that. This created a huge problem for Statistics SA. I think that, in a similar way, the regularisation of the rates of interns is a matter for the DPSA and no department has the individual right to fix those rates, and that is what happened there.
In respect of the qualifications, let me just deal with the issue again. I do not think that it is comparable to look at the payments through the South African Social Security Agency, Sassa, and those 60 000 small businesses in a very short time. The systems are differently structured, and I was the first one to raise the fact that we assiduously checked that the 30-day rule was complied with. When there was no compliance, we were the ones who actually raised the flags about it. It wasn't you, sir; it was I who raised the issue, because we sat with Statistics SA and worked through these issues systematically. [Applause.] The reason was that BAS could not deal with the problem, and it was a BAS problem and not Statistics SA's problem. I have also indicated this, and this is why the hon Van Rooyen mentioned this.
We have asked Statistics SA to ensure that it has the capacity to deal with the accounts and all invoices coming in. However, when you have a surge like the one you had during the census, then it would need special measures. What Statistics SA need to put on the table before the committee is an action plan on how they plan to deal with the next large activity. This activity may be the community survey or the next census. Statistics SA is duty-bound to do that because those are unique circumstances. You cannot build an organisation at the high water mark of the census because there will be too many underemployed people in the organisation. This is just a peculiar challenge. People who run organisations will appreciate this.
The other part of the accruals was a consequence of the fact that a number of parts of what transpired during the census came from other government departments. Statistics SA would be dependent on the Department of Public Works for the hiring of buildings across the country, just like they would be dependent on the departments of transport in provinces to provide motorised transport and later bill them. If the billing is out of sync, you then get these kinds of accruals. That is what the Auditor-General found and the details would be revealed. Earlier I said that when the process by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Scopa, is organised I am pretty sure that we would be able to deal with these issues.
The last issue that I would like to deal with is the quarterly labour force survey, QLFS. In my earlier address I said that it is important to deal with the issues about the business register and, hon Harris, all departments are equal. We convene, but it would be churlish not to recognise that the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, CIPC, lived through a general problem during the year before last, occasioned by the IT systems that they have now been coming through. This last period, with the introduction of the big changes in the new Companies Act, has produced an enormous challenge for the CIPC. There have been some challenges in the process, and if we are not going to get this thing marching in sync, then I think that it will be particularly difficult.
We have now had a classification system up and running for the past fortnight. We will be able to work on this on a continuous basis. Now it is a date that we need. We need it because we need the proper frame from which to sample so that the quarterly employment survey and the QLFS continue to represent far more similarities than we have seen today. I was not in control of CIPC or the circumstances that affect them.
In respect of discouraged workers, the number is 2,3 million. It is a big number but it is a 2,3 million number and it is something we will have to continue to work on. I am not sure how this will happen, but most of the Members of Parliament sit through Parliament's boring speeches like this one, playing on their iPads. All of the information is now available there. [Laughter.] Perhaps what we need to do is to work out ways of Parliament utilising the data differently.
In fact, it is not a budget discussion. We need to structure different kinds of discussions and inform ourselves with debates around a series of different issues. Employment is one of those challenges. I continue to believe that it is not a party-political challenge. It is a national issue that we should all be concerned about, because there are too many young people who will become exceedingly disaffected if we do not deal with these matters.
Let me conclude by again expressing appreciation for the support. Even the grudging support is important, and we can now move forward to the next phase of our work. Thank you very much. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.