Chairperson, hon Minister, Deputy Minister, this is certainly not a maiden speech and I would like to speak from here, because I want the chairperson of the disciplinary committee, the hon Derek Hanekom, to protect my back. [Laughter.]
Hon Minister, in your own words, as you concluded your address to this House, you said, "We are starting to show how monitoring and evaluation can contribute to building a capable and developmental state which delivers services effectively and responsibly to its citizens."
We agree that this department is starting to show how they could do exactly this, and they are certainly making progress. But we believe that they are not making sufficient progress because, for all intents and purposes up until now, we have relied very heavily on our Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 institutions like the Auditor-General, the Public Protector and the Public Service Commission to monitor, evaluate and inform the public out there about what exactly is happening within government.
When this department was set up in the Presidency, we all had hoped that at last we were going to have a department residing within the Presidency that would do self-monitoring and evaluation of all other government departments. Now, I wonder to what extent that is happening. If we need to have a capable state, if we need to have a developmental state, then we need to have people that are capable of managing that state on the political and administrative levels.
The report that we received yesterday from the Public Service Commission does not say that to us, and the hon Sogoni, the chairperson of our committee, referred to this in his speech. When you look at expenditure versus performance of departments, it leaves much to be desired. The Department of Health, for example, spent 96,6% of their budget, but in terms of performance they were at 37%. The Department of Labour spent 99,5% of their budget, but their performance is at 43%. What is happening here? Departments are spending their money, but they are not performing according to the predetermined objectives which they themselves set in their annual reports and when they presented their budgets.
Now, Mr Minister, through you, Chairperson, this is an area in which I think the Minister's department really can do much more in ensuring that it acts as a policeman over the other departments. We heard in the corridors that Ministers and other heads of departments do not favour the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation being the big brother policing them. But I think it is about time, because we need that. For that to happen, we need to ensure that we have either the support of the President and the Cabinet or have legislation in place.
To that end, we noted from the strategic plan that the results Act, which is going to be a piece of legislation that governs what this department can and cannot do, is going to be passed, probably, by this House in 2015. Now 2015 is far too long a time, and my appeal to you, hon Minister, is that this piece of legislation be accelerated so that it can come before the respective committees and Parliament to be approved. You have the necessary muscle to deal with all recalcitrant public servants and even Ministers that are not performing. So what I am saying is that we need more aggression from the department. It has our support - from the IFP. I have one minute left to speak about the NYDA. The NYDA is an acronym for the National Youth Development Agency, and it is a four-letter acronym. But the NYDA has become like a four-letter word; a four-letter swearword. This is because of the amount of money that they have allegedly spent. That's what I said in the committee, R100 million, and also the exorbitant salaries they pay themselves. We need to know whether these salaries are benchmarked against any other public entity or benchmarked against officials within government departments. They pay themselves exorbitant salaries. There is also the perception of political bias. Chairperson, I have 20 seconds according to the clock here.
I think that we need to take the NYDA into our bosoms. The Standing Committee on Appropriations has been given this responsibility because every other committee threw them out. They were a hot potato.
As the Appropriations committee and the IFP we are prepared to take them into our bosoms and work with them. The chairperson of the IFP Youth Brigade, the hon Hlengwa - a new member and he sits next to me - asked me to remind us, hon Minister, that the NYDA is a holding exercise.
What we would like to see is a Ministry for the youth as we move forward. So, Chairperson, we support the Budget Vote and we trust that you can be more aggressive as a department in ensuring that there is good governance and good delivery. Thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]