Mr Speaker, the Public Service is in crisis. Departments and entities are repeatedly appearing before Scopa with qualified, or worse, audit findings by the Auditor-General.
These findings are due to a host of factors, but the golden thread in most cases relates to human resources and poor leadership. It has become the rule rather than the exception that accounting officers and chief financial officers who appear before Scopa have been appointed recently.
They therefore plead innocence or blame their predecessors for the chaos in their departments; and the chances are very good that they will be gone by the time the department appears before Scopa again the next year. Our Public Service can ill afford this type of hit-and-run leadership.
In the national audit outcomes for 2008-09, the Auditor-General also confirms the lack of consistency in leadership and the high turnover in senior management as one of the root causes of poor audit findings. The leader of an organisation needs to be fit for purpose and he or she must be the best qualified in all respects to do the job. In too many cases, cadre deployment results in people getting the jobs that they are not qualified to perform.
We know there are leaders in government who agree that cadre deployment has been a disaster, but who are not courageous enough to speak out. Perhaps someone will surprise us; maybe Minister Manuel will stick his neck out further. We are eagerly waiting.