Chairperson, hon Comrade Roy Ainslie will have to wait another three minutes for his moment of glory.
I rise to support all the reports, on behalf of Scopa, that have been presented by our very competent chairperson. However, I would just like to make a point - and I'm glad the Deputy Minister of Public Service and Administration is here - that one of the reports that we considered was from the Department of Correctional Services, in which we found that they had spent a huge amount of R1,2 billion on overtime in 2008 and 2009.
Whilst we understand that sometimes negotiating salary increments and other terms and conditions of employment takes a long time, the inordinate delay in sorting out the five-day working week and the seven-day working week, which led to overtime, caused this department to have to find R483 million from its own budget.
And, although we had representatives - the chairperson of the Correctional Services committee and the Director-General of Correctional Services - make an impassioned plea that we condone this, we felt as a committee that the department needed to plan carefully in future so that they did not take Scopa for granted in that we would automatically approve a direct charge against the National Revenue Fund.
Our appeal is that even the Department for the Public Service and Administration, in conducting negotiations for increases, should do so, possibly, on a three-year cycle so that there is certainty within the budgets about how much would be set aside for increments.
The other issue that we dealt with concerned the Department of Defence and Military Veterans. Here, again, they felt that we would automatically approve an amount of R5,4 million as a direct charge. One of the problems that they had here was that they did not comply with the Treasury Regulations in acquiring certain photocopying machines. We felt that this was something that they should have done. Therefore, the money had to be funded from the budget of the department.
Lastly, I request members of the executive, those that are here and even those that are not here, that when Scopa concludes its report - whatever report we place before this House for approval - that the executive authority of that particular department submit a progress report on all the recommendations made by Scopa within 60 days after the adoption of the report by the House.
I would take it that these reports would be adopted by the House today, and within 60 days members of the executive would have to report on remedial action taken on the recommendations made. We trust that the Office of the Speaker has satisfactory tracking systems to ensure that within the 60 days those reports come back to the Office of the Speaker.
We, in Scopa, are also beginning to put a tracking system in place to ensure that we get the responses. Otherwise, it would be absolutely useless for us to come here, make recommendations for the House to adopt the report, and then have the executive do nothing about it. Thank you very much, Chairperson. We support the reports. [Applause.]