Department of Home Affairs Quarter 4 performance; with Ministry

Meeting report

The Chairperson said the Committee was under strict orders to complete the meeting timeously to allow for the plenary sitting of the National Assembly and the Department could reply in writing to questions it was not able to answer in the time allowed at the meeting.

Briefing by the Department of Home Affairs on Quarter 4

Mr Jackson McKay, Acting Director General, DHA, spoke to the Administration, Citizen Affairs and Immigration Affairs Programmes of the Department. He said two out of the 24 annual targets were discontinued namely; NIS developed in respect of: Request for Proposal published and BMA established as per BMA Road Map.

Administration achieved 56% of its quarterly targets, Citizen Affairs achieved 67% and Immigration Affairs achieved 83%. The quarterly achievement was thus 64%. Under Administration, it attained only 25% of the Information Services target. He then spoke to the list of targets not achieved and the associated reasons for non -achievement. For the year, Administration and Citizen Affairs both achieved 67% of targets, while Immigration Affairs achieved 100% giving an overall achievement score of 75%.

He said the challenges of the Department were:

• that it was not properly positioned or capacitated to operate within the security system of the State and as critical enabler of national security, e-government and e-commerce;
• the IT systems were not integrated and digital and manual systems were running in the same environment;
• the high rate of vacant unfunded posts in frontline offices and in certain critical management level posts;
• The heavy dependency on other organs of State to deliver its services (State Information Technology Agency (SITA), the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) and the South African Revenue Services (SARS);
• the amount of litigation the Department encountered; and
• the labour- intensive service delivery model; thus, its services were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said the key priorities going forward included the following:

• Phased-implementation of the Repositioning program;
• Establishment of an effective Border Management Authority (BMA);
• Continuation of the modernisation program;
• Establishment of the National Identity System;
• Implementation of the E-visa system;
• Filling of vacant funded critical posts;
• Early birth registration and issuing of Smart ID Cards;
• Issuing of critical skills and business visas;
• Comprehensive review of citizenship and immigration policies and legislation;
• Upgrading of the six priority land ports of entry as One-Stop Border Posts;
• Enlargement of the Department’s footprint, including partnership with 3rd party providers;
• Resource reprioritization to fund Covid-19 recovery plan; and
• Capacitation of the Legal Services competence of the Department .

Mr Gordon Hollamby, CFO, DHA, presented the unaudited budget versus expenditure report and a report on payment of invoices in Quarter 4 of 2019/20. He said the whole budget was spent except for R187 000 of which R181 000 was for Compensation of Employees. There was no unauthorised expenditure. He then spoke to the self-financing budget versus expenditure and said the R1.1b allocated now formed part of the adjusted appropriation. 99.51% of Quarter 4’s invoices were paid within 30 days. On the issue of spending all of the budget yet not achieving all its targets, he said this was because of historic underfunding of the Department and because there was no correlation between the budget and the APP.

On the spending of 100% of the budget but not achieving all the targets, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, Minister of Home Affairs, said the targets were for selected strategic issues, not for all the work of the Department. Most of the Department ’s core work, such as births, deaths and marriages, was not in the APP and this was work where money was also spent.

Discussion

Mr A Roos (DA) said it was youth month and mobile units from the Department were supposed to be deployed to support learners with ID registration. Would this be happening? He said there were students and learners stuck in eSwatini and Mozambique and unable to come back from across border in the eSwatini area. Was the Minister aware of this and were there any attempts to assist? On the war room at SITA over network down time, he said the Committee had been told in November 2019 that reference architecture was presented in 2018 and an investment plan approved in March 2019. What happened since then and what had happened to those documents that had been agreed to? He noticed a R53m overspend on deportations. Since 2018 and up to the current three-quote system, the Department appeared to be having issues. He wanted to know how much of the overspend concerned the transportation of deportees and a report should be submitted to show how much these trips were costing. He noted the issue where people could not get their completed passports and ID documents from Home Affairs offices. People inside and outside South Africa could not get their passports and he also asked the Minister how people outside of South Africa could renew their passports.

Ms M Molekwa (ANC) proposed that the Department draw up and implement a plan of action on those targets it did not achieve.                              

Ms L Tito (EFF) said the whole budget had been spent, but only 75% of the targets had been achieved. On the e-gate pilot she said that it had been said there was a lack of skilled people on the one hand and on the other hand SITA was giving the Department problems by not providing proper support while the Department was dependant on it. SITA needed to appear before the Committee to answer.
                                                                       
Mr D Moela (ANC) said the Department needed a monitoring strategy to ensure that targets were achieved as not achieving targets reflected badly on the Department. The Department needed to revise its list of priorities as some of them would not be achieved. The issue of IT in the Department needed to be worked on. He asked the Deputy Minister about youth month matters that had been discussed with him and wanted a full briefing. If Covid-19 was a challenge, how was this factor being mitigated?                                                                   

Mr J McGluwa (DA) said he had been a member of this Committee ten years before and if one looked through the documents a number of matters like the IT, the smart card and legal team issues had been prevalent for years since then and the Green ID book had been labelled a fraudster’s dream. This needed sorting out as SITA was incompetent and messing up the whole IT system of the Department. He noted one reason given for not achieving the Department’s Bill target was because of a lack of staff and that the Department would recruit more staff. How much more staff would be recruited? On the alignment of the budget and planning, he wanted detailed reasons why there was misalignment. On the e-permit issue, he said the Department must stop giving Covid-19 as the reason for not achieving its targets. The annual target for the issuance of ID books was 3 million and he wanted clarity on how many ID documents were issued. He said R53.9m rand was overspent on the immigration budget and he wanted clarification on the major causes of the over expenditure. On critical skills in IT, he said the Department had filled 85% of posts, but it was at a time when the Department would not be receiving more money and vacant posts were frozen.

Ms T Legwase (ANC) asked when the two discontinued targets were discontinued. She asked what happened to targets that had not been met. Were they rolled over into the next year’s targets? When the Department did the budget, how did they do that without including core mandate work and how did they budget for work that was not in the APP? Had the Department identified setbacks related to Covid-19 regulations and did it have a recovery plan?                                                       

On the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) which the Department acknowledged contributed towards non achievement of targets, Mr M Chabane (ANC) asked how it was going to mitigate its impact on not achieving targets. He said it was time that the Committee met with SITA and the Department on the issue of IT and the network. On targets not achieved and the budget, he said the Committee wanted clarity on why 100% of the budget was spent but only 75% of the targets were achieved. Some of the APP targets might not be in alignment with the budget. He said the vacant posts issue needed to be elevated because the Department was complaining about unfunded posts. How many critical posts were going to be funded posts and what were the outstanding issues around vacant posts? On the deportation of foreign nationals, he asked if the Department was recouping monies from those countries deportees were deported to and what was the plan to recover monies spent on deportation. He wanted to know what the Department’s implementation plan and turnaround time for the Department’s plan for their legal department was.                                                                                  

On the ID project at schools, Deputy Minister Njabulo Nzuza said the Department was ready to begin the previous week, but the Department of Basic Education had to postpone the opening of schools. DHA would be rolling out mobile units to schools when it re-opened, as it was a great opportunity to register the Grade 12s while they were at school. The Department would be going to Mpumalanga on 16 June. The project was not just for youth month but would be a standard program for the Department to ensure that all learners received ID document applications at school so that by the time they wrote their exams the backlog would have been dealt with.                         

On what happened to targets that were not achieved, Mr McKay said the targets formed part of the next financial year’s planning as was outlined in the remedial steps program in the presentation and most of those targets not achieved were near completion.

He said 2.8 million IDs were issued for the financial year out of a target of 3 million.

On Covid-19 and the implementation of the e-visa, he said the e-visa needed to be implemented in foreign countries, in this instance China, Nigeria and India and the Department would have travelled from February to these countries to install the hardware and software but there were already travel bans in place. As soon as the restrictions were lifted the Department would continue the roll out. At home, all the work was done; it was only the foreign missions that had to be completed.

On network architecture and investment plan, Mr Thulani Mavuso, Acting DDG: Institutional Planning and Support & Information Services, DHA, said that currently, SITA was upgrading the core links and network architecture and this upgrade would be covered by all other departments as all departments would benefit from the upgrade.

He said the e-permit was launched in India in January. On Monday 1 March a travel ban came into force just as the Department wanted to go to Nigeria.

On ABIS and the non-achievement of targets, he said the Department was doing integration to allow e-gate to talk to the existing Home Affairs National Identification System (HANIS) system.

On whether the Department knew when setting IT targets that it did not have the skills in place, he said the Department was working with various partners on the modernisation of the system but time was not on their side to achieve those particular targets because projects were delayed. 

He said the Department had done the live capture upgrade and now needed to test it, but it did not have a load to do this test.

On capacity issues and on how many posts were critical, prioritised and funded within the Department, Ms Nkidi Mohoboko, DDG: Human Resource Management & Development, DHA, said 51 positions and the funding of these had been prioritised. The prioritised positions were that of heads of offices and ports, provincial managers and areas that did not have chief directors. It also included the positions of the CIO and other DDG and DG positions. The recruitment process had already started. Going forward positions within the IT space were now also prioritised. These were vacant funded positions; contracted CSIR old hands on a secondment basis; and newly created positions. This coming year, legal services was prioritised. The positions were funded and the recruitment process had started and similarly for the Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs (SCRA) and the Refugee Appeal Board (RAB) and managers had been told that all positions from 1 April that were vacant, were funded.

On learners being stuck at the borders, Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said he had contacted the director responsible for borders who did not know anything about any incident. He had received a message from the Minister of Home Affairs in eSwatini about some students stuck at the border, but by the time he had contacted officials, the problem had already been solved.

On the issue of passport collection, he said passports had not been issued because of the travel restrictions, but now the issuance of passports would be looked at afresh.

He said Mr Mavuso had answered on the issue of IT. He added that Mr Mavuso had met for two weeks with IBM personnel to resolve challenges but even this group could not develop a solution because the issue was a big problem which had existed for ten years and frustrated the Department.

On the legal services unit of the Department, he said the Committee Chairperson had come to the Department for a briefing on the plans for the future and the Committee received a report on this.

In reply to Mr McGluwa on Covid-19, he said that Covid-19 did not start in March, it started in December 2019 in other countries like China and then in Europe. Any target related to travel could not be calculated from March when South Africa had its first Covid-19 case. This needed to be taken into consideration.

On the e-visa issue, he said it was also about travel, because it was to be done in other countries which had already had Covid-19 and were under lockdown

On the number of smart IDs issued, he said Mr McKay had answered it.

On how the budget process was done, he said the budget process was not done by just one Department. It was a six-month process, at the end of which it was not the Department which decided the allocated amount, it was Treasury that decided what to allocate to the Department and this was not necessarily the amount the Department wished for.

On whether monies were recouped from countries where deportees were deported to, he said there were no refunds for the transport of the deportees, but the matter could be discussed bilaterally with neighbouring countries.

The Chairperson said he agreed with Mr Roos around the youth month issue and said he did not see the Department having programmes around the youth. He wanted to see an upscaling of youth programmes, especially in youth month, the month in which youth were celebrating the life and death of Peter Mokaba.

He said the Committee would be calling a meeting with the Department, SITA and the Department of Communications around IT and ABIS. The Committee intended taking the matter to SCOPA around these issues and matters involving technology company EOH.

The Committee planned to do an urgent oversight of the Government Printing Works on 17 June because it had received reports regarding corruption there and would interact with all the stakeholders such as unions and management.

The Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs had nothing to hide and was transparent and was trying to run a clean government and this was the oath taken by parliamentarians. He acknowledged the role of the media to hold the Committee accountable on behalf of the public and he requested all members to be available for oversight duties.

The meeting was adjourned.