Hon Chair, hon Minister, hon members and guests, Minister, your department has unfortunately presented a strategic plan for the next three years that is seriously flawed. It displays what is an unintended consequence of what is a laudable initiative by the Auditor- General.
The Auditor-General will, from 2011-12, be auditing outcomes as well as financial records. Your officials do not wish to be found wanting, and they have set targets in the strategic plan for the department that are lower than the previous targets, or are simply indicated as "not applicable". Just a few examples will suffice to illustrate this point.
Firstly, regarding the reissue of ID books: The target in 2010 was 35 days; the target for 2011 is 47 days. Secondly, the issue of passports: The target in 2010 was 10 days; the target for 2011 is 13 days for live capture and 24 days for manual processing. Is it acceptable that a department should actually plan for declining service delivery levels? We think not.
Further, Minister, no targets have been set for critical focus areas. Just two examples are the following. A position paper will be developed on policy options for managing the migration of skilled and unskilled migrants during 2011-12. The targets for the following two years are shown as "not applicable". A baseline study is planned to inform the department's countercorruption project. Again, the targets for the following two years are indicated as "not applicable". How is it possible that issues as important as migration and countercorruption - two of the critical issues on the department's agenda - can have targets indicated as "not applicable"?
Minister, we have noted the strategic plan and we have noted that the DA believes that you should in fact have demanded a redraft of the plan to reflect improvements in service delivery and definitive targets for critical areas. This plan should never have been tabled in its current form. It is an insult to South African residents whose lives and livelihoods depend so intimately on your department's services.
Your much-publicised Turnaround Strategy, Minister, has indeed achieved some praiseworthy results, particularly in the field of civic affairs. One hundred and forty-two consultants were employed, at a cost of R899,2 million, to engineer the turnaround strategy.
The strategic plan now talks of "transformation initiatives". The director- general has told the portfolio committee that this is another building block in the Turnaround Strategy. There is no indication of just how much these transformation initiatives will cost, or exactly what they comprise. We, as the taxpayers, are funding these initiatives, and we deserve the assurance that the Turnaround Strategy and the transformation initiatives will actually result in improved results in every functional area of the department.
Over the past five years, five separate pieces of Home Affairs legislation have been considered by this House. The Refugees Amendment Bill was endorsed by both Houses of Parliament. The DA did not support the Bill in its entirety. We do not believe that, together with the 2008 Refugees Amendment Act, it will adequately serve to streamline refugee management systems and strategies.
Minister, we remind your department in your presence that they have made a commitment to tabling the refugee regulations before the committee before they are gazetted. And we will hold them to this.
The budgetary allocation for asylumseekers shows a 54% increase, to R69 million. The department has been granted an additional allocation of R79 million over the next three years for the management of asylumseekers and refugees. We trust that the proposed status determination committees and appeal authorities will be fully functional at all refugee centres by the end of the coming financial year.
The department has identified, as a risk in this regard, "no differentiation between asylumseekers and economic migrants", and, as a mitigating strategy, "the development of a new policy document to deal with the economic migrants". The strategic plan then contains a scaled-down version as a strategic objective: "to review the policy and regulatory framework to manage economic migration".
The annual target limits the scope of the measures to be taken even further to a "policy document ... with clear options for the processing of asylumseekers and refugees". Once again, the targets in this regard for the outer years are indicated as "not applicable".
Although the issue of economic migrants is constantly raised by the Minister as an abuse of the asylum process in South Africa, no measurable outputs have been framed to address the apparent problem. We can only assume that it has been subsumed in the 2011-12 target which reads: "Position paper developed on policy options for managing the migration of skilled and unskilled migrants" - again, "not applicable" in the outer years.
But, Minister, we are somewhat puzzled. We have a target for next year that proposes a position paper on policy options to manage migration. But the strategic plan's situational analysis says that, during last year, "significant progress was ... made with ... the development of a new immigration policy". We were also told last year that stakeholders would be consulted on an immigration policy and that the policy would actually be adopted this coming year, 2011-12.
Now, the urgent need for a comprehensive and sustainable policy has been emphasised by many, including the DA. Unfortunately, the National Assembly saw fit to endorse the Immigration Amendment Bill earlier this year in the absence of a migration policy and any clear way forward. We said then, and we repeat this now, that the Immigration Amendment Bill, with the changes that it proposes, will only hamper skills acquisition. It will not pave the way to growth, as the Minister has announced.
This is not withstanding the fact that the committee-deliberation process did result in some of the most offensive provisions of the Bill being removed. These include the compilation of a list of businesses considered to be "in the national interest" and a list of corporate sectors in which foreign investment might be allowed.
The Minister is quoted as saying that she is unhappy with the portfolio committee changes to the Bill, and will seek to have these changes reversed during the National Council of Provinces' deliberations. The executive and the legislative functions are becoming blurred. Parliament is the national legislature. We now call on the NCOP to deliberate on the Bill in good faith and to make decisions it considers to be in South Africa's best interests, without being unduly influenced by the Minister's pronouncements.
Minister, I would very quickly like to applaud the Independent Electoral Commission. It is indeed refreshing to interact with an entity which functions close to optimally. Our focus is currently on the 2011 local government elections. The IEC appears well prepared for the task.
Not so refreshing is the strategic plan of the Film and Publication Board. This board plans to spend R24 million on paying the salaries of its management staff, and R4,2 million on the salaries of its classifiers. We are funding a board that has nine board members, no less than 15 managers, with only 52 semiskilled employees. And it is no wonder, Minister, that this board continues to run at a deficit. It must identify areas in which it could make savings, or cut back on nonpriority areas. We appreciate its work, but it is simply not sustainable with its current structure.
Minister, as I close I will use this opportunity to call on you publicly ...