Hon Deputy Speaker, Acting President, Speaker, it is a known fact that committees are the engines of Parliament, as they process almost 60% of the work for consideration in the House. This includes the processing of legislation, holding public hearings, appointing officials or people to institutions supporting democracy, holding the executive accountable and conducting oversight of executive action.
They do so, however, in a constrained environment. There is a lack of committee rooms. As we already know, we only have 23 committee rooms that are shared by 60 committees from both Houses. They are limited therefore in their ability to hold meetings as often as possible to fulfil these particular mandates. To achieve their mandates, the committees of Parliament need to be adequately resourced.
At a recent meeting of the committee of chairpersons - and I see a number of them in the House here - a committee which I chair, a number of issues were raised, including legacy issues from the third Parliament that need to be engaged with and addressed, such as support for chairpersons, problems regarding chairpersons' offices, furniture, tools of the trade, and the need to improve the quality of work done by support staff. In addition, we were informed that certain posts were frozen owing to budget constraints. Some of the chairpersons are without secretaries. Chairperson Stone Sizani - I'm not sure whether he's in the House - and others are without secretaries because posts have been frozen.
Over and above this, the biggest fundamental issue that came up was the budget allocated to committees. Currently, there 59 committees, excluding the not yet established committees on the Planning Commission, on Performance Monitoring and on Administration. I'm not sure whether they are going to have just one portfolio committee in that area. The Joint Rules Committee still has to determine that particular issue.
So, we currently have 59 committees. This includes internal committees such as those on ethics, the multiparty women's caucus, the Joint Rules Committee, the joint programming committee, etc. They all get their budget allocations from the legislature and the oversight division.
Of the 59 committees, 50 have oversight functions; 38 of those committees are in the National Assembly and 12 are in the National Council of Provinces. All these committees need to share the R25 million that is available for the current financial year - all of them.
Dividing this amongst the 50 oversight committees means each will be allocated only R450 000 for the current financial year, which totals R22,5 million. The other R2,5 million is reserved for internal committees such as the Joint Rules Committee and other joint parliamentary committees.
Owing to the additional number of committees, obviously the allocation has shrunk. Committees used to get an allocation of around R700 000 to R800 000, but because the number of committees has increased that figure has shrunk to R450 000 in this current financial year. Therefore, for future budgeting purposes, we would argue strongly for an increase if committees are indeed expected to play this particular meaningful role.
What is happening currently is that there are a number of requests to attend the Minmecs. We are applying a policy of: you invite, you pay. So, Ministers are paying for that. The Ministry of Trade and Industry has invited the entire committee. The Ministry is going to be paying their fares, transport and meals. We will only be able to pay for accommodation. Therefore, the issue of the separation of powers gets blurred in that particular way.
I remember that in a debate held in another forum the issue was raised of members continually using instruments of the executive. How will they come back and then do oversight on that particular issue? I say this because a time will come when executive members will say, "But you were in the meeting when this issue was agreed to." Therefore, this is not really something that is healthy and we should not be encouraging it going forward. But because of a lack of resources, we are continually agreeing to them going because the Department of Trade and Industry has 19 institutions. The portfolio committee ought to go and engage, understand the mandates and know who is there so that by the time they effect their accountability, at least they know what the mandates are and so on.
I therefore propose the following for allocations to committees. Fortunately, I presented this to the Chief Whips' Forum as a lobbying body to see if they wouldn't support us going forward into the budget lekgotla. I have also presented this to the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and other officials in the Speaker's office. I propose that all the portfolio, standing and select committees get an allocation of R1 million each as a base minimum, and that the three joint committees and the Standing Committee on the Auditor-General be allocated R500 000 each because their roles and functions are very different from those of the portfolio, standing and select committees.
I propose that such expenditure also be governed by particular regulations, and that 50% of the money that they would then be allocated ought to go towards oversight functions, which include assessing the impact of legislation for the sake of a better life, as well as doing oversight to ensure service delivery by way of responsive, proactive interventions.
Thirty percent will then be utilised for processing legislation for public hearings because you ought to have public hearings on legislation, and for the filling of vacancies in Chapter 9 institutions and for international travel. The other 15% is to be utilised for effecting accountability, scrutinising the annual reports and for budget hearings on Votes. Five percent then is to be regulated by committees because they have expenditures such as receiving guests, entertaining and so forth. That is my proposal in terms of the usage of that particular issue - money.
I propose that a further R12 million be allocated as a pool amount, in addition to the R1 million base that will go to each portfolio committee, for support services to committees, including staff development programmes aimed at improving the quality of work, and for assisting committees that may have extra work in a lifetime. That would ensure, therefore, that they are able to meet demands, and also allocate to those committees that have oversight work that goes beyond borders, that is the International Relations and Trade and Industry committees in the main and others that might be identified from time to time. They will all draw from that.
In addition, I propose that the advertisements placed when vacancies are to be filled or public hearings held no longer be paid for from a committee's budget. The money for advertising in newspapers is also deducted from the R450 000. So, if you have a pool amount of money, this will then assist and relieve the stress on the committees of having to pay even for the adverts that we see in the newspapers and for public hearings because there will be more of them, particularly oversight hearings on particular topical issues or incidences that might happen in society. We will be organising those particular oversight hearings so that they can then bring reports here and those reports can be adopted from time to time.
As we apply the budget, we also need to have control mechanisms - financial control systems - that should be beefed up in the committees section, so that financial statements for every quarter are given to the chairs of the portfolio committees on what they have spent money on. In that way, they will then begin to know that when we say no to an issue, it is because we are informed by the expenditure patterns.
Committee chairpersons are also therefore expected to develop their five- year programmes that are aligned to departmental strategic plans, and identify which programmes will be identified annually. We cannot become champions of overseeing others if our own House is not in order.
On the frozen posts, which include the posts of committee assistants, committee secretaries, secretaries to chairpersons and researchers, we should move to unfreeze them as soon as we can.
We fully agree with the Speaker that we must also cut the fat where we identify it. For example, there are certain areas I will be speaking with the chairpersons about in order to really begin to cut the fat. A meeting of 30 minutes gets a full service of food and catering, and so forth. I think that here a meeting should just get served tea and coffee; that's it. We can't have a 30-minute meeting being served a full service - food and everything - because then every meeting costs R4 000. We really need to look at the fat and cut it.
On the implementation of oversight, in the forthcoming financial year of 2010-11 we see that an allocation of R5 million is being proposed. We welcome that. A task team has already being put into place that will begin to develop an implementation framework. It met this week, and the team will be presenting the framework to the Joint Rules Committee and the Parliamentary Oversight Authority.
With regard to the scheduling of committee meetings, committees have been formed into groups owing to the shortage of venues. They will be grouped as Groups A, B, C and D, so that we can share the days and allocate them to committees. We are in consultation with the Chief Whips of the parties on that particular issue. I therefore say that we really need to look differently at this issue.
I thank all the officials, the management and staff and hope that you will do even better in providing your service, and where it is lacking, we will then indeed have money to go for skills development and ensure that we introduce a work ethic and professionalism to the service. Thank you very much. [Applause.]