Chairperson, hon Minister, director-general, my family and students, thank you for coming. 'The time has come,' the walrus said, "to talk of many things. Our Department of Employment and Labour is dysfunctional. I receive literally dozens of desperate pleas from injured employees and many more complaints from retrenched Unemployment Insurance Fund, UIF, contributors who haven't been paid. The lists are endless and the comments are heartfelt.
Unfortunately, the department is spending billions and servicing very little. Every year, for the last five years I have read the Auditor- General's Report which tells us of horror stories encountered during the audit of the departments. Like Humpty Dumpty, it appears that all the President's politicians and all the President's men couldn't put Humpty in this place again.
This department spent literally a fortune on purchasing, developing and rolling out a computer system which was structured and restructured for five years. This system was not only inadequate but completely destructive and left the claiming public in mid-air. The department has the audacity to roll out an advocacy campaign to make vulnerable workers aware of their labour rights and these rights were merely trod upon when workers were at their most vulnerable.
The only functioning section within the department, the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, CCMA, was refused extra funding when it needed it most. The roll-out and the enforcement of the National Minimum Wage was left to the CCMA after having received a miniscule increase in its funding.
Treasury warned the country that 750 000 jobs would be lost with the advent of the National Minimum Wage and the recipient of this Tsunami is the CCMA which is already beginning to feel the effects. Our labour laws and regulatory authority are harsh, complex and overtly invasive and yet the Ministry does not see its way clear to ensure that inspections and enforcement services are adequately resourced.
The core mandate of the department includes providing adequate social security nets to protect vulnerable workers. The current service delivery has made a mockery of this. Labour is not working! It would be true to say that our department is riddled with inadequacy and has left the South African workforce with no faith in the system.
The country celebrated amendments to the UIF at the beginning of this year. The President trumpeted issues such as paternity leave
and various other extensions to the legislation. Parliament passed the legislation and it was gazetted, lo and behold, our inadequate and over resourced departmental officials were unable to roll-out something as simple as paternity leave, because they hadn't done the administration and the paperwork. I stand here this morning to tell you that all the legislation was done and dusted in January this year, and literally seven months later, simple paperwork hasn't been completed and South Africans cannot claim paternity leave. In fact, the leave was rolled-out as an advert to the public as to why they should vote for the ruling party. Maybe someone should tell the voting public that the ruling party told a lie.
Even the much boasted National Minimum Wage was pushed through the National Assembly and the NCOP with a horrific mistake. Despite the DA's early alert of the mistake to the department, it went ahead with the legislation. The Auditor-General reported on irregular, fruitless and wasteful... [Interjections.]