Chairperson, I think we should accept from the start that there has been a problem within the welfare system of this country and, more importantly, within the Department of Welfare itself.
We cannot attribute that, in so far as the poverty alleviation is concerned, to apartheid or anything else. The ANC takes responsibility. I repeat, the ANC takes the responsibility for the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the department.
In other words we are in no way trying to justify or make excuses for not delivering poverty relief to the people who need it most. We have come out openly and very clearly to say that the welfare system of this country is failing the poorest of the poor. After listening to the evaluation made by all the service providers, ie NGOs, churches and everybody, of the department and our welfare system in October last year, I became completely convinced that there is something radically wrong within the department and with the work that we are supposed to do.
I cannot go into details in answering some of the questions that have been put here, for instance, by Her Majesty the hon Loretta Jacobus. However, I understand there are guidelines in place, but from what I know, those guidelines are not as user-friendly as they are supposed to be. As hon members know, some of the services that we provide did not reach the clients that they were supposed to reach. As the hon member has said, I will be able to come back and answer the rest of the questions at a select committee meeting.
We are attending to the issues that members are asking about. The first is the issue of reorganising the department. We are auditing the department and the skills therein. We are hoping that the company that we have asked to do that for us will be able to finish its task and come up with an audit by the end of this month. In fact, I told them that I wanted to see it by the eighth, but unfortunately they have not been able to do that.
With regard to the question of the morality within the department, as I have said, an attitude of ``I don't care'' prevails in the whole department in general. Let me point out some of the things that I observed and for which I had to call people to order in October. People came to work at about nine o'clock and by 12 o'clock they were gone, and it was very hard to find them. At the beginning when they were not there I thought they had gone to the provinces to attend to other issues. Even worse, people came to work in shorts. I am not against such things, but they actually do not dress properly. They are not presentable.
Last year I had to harangue them about the fact that I had never seen such a situation as prevailed in the department. If we are doing that, as far as I am concerned, we will never be able to provide, as public servants, the better life for all that this Government has promised our people.
In so far as the question of the Public Service and its incompetence is concerned - I refer this to Mr Makoela - if one wants to see incompetence, one has only to come to the department one of these days and ask someone to do something for one, and one will see incompetence written on the faces of everyone there or at least of the majority. Before the new DG came in, things were bad to the extent that when I read the memoranda that had to go to Cabinet, I sometimes had to send them back two or three times or sometimes even withdrew them when I was already in a Cabinet meeting, simply because they did not represent the policy of this Government.
Since November, the new DG has been trying, literally alone, to do some of the work that is supposed to be done by the department.
These are examples of incompetence in general. Members know very well that it is very, very hard to dismiss a public servant in South Africa. I repeat: It is very, very hard to dismiss a public servant in South Africa. As former Minister for the Public Service and Administration I will tell this House one of these days about the problems and what the causes are. [Laughter.] With regard to what I am supposed to do and what I am doing, as I said, we are restructuring the department. We have instituted an audit. We are instituting disciplinary actions because one cannot simply dismiss a public servant. One must have grounds to do so. This is part of the ongoing process.
I have been to the Eastern Cape on more than one occasion. The premier and I are not satisfied with the way in which services in general are being given to the poor in that province. Rev Stofile was one of the first who, as early as July or August, pointed out to me there was a problem. There is a problem as far as the poverty relief programmes of the Department of Welfare are concerned, and he has been very concerned, as an individual, as a priest and as the premier of that province. He has been very concerned about the way in which these poverty funds have been distributed and the accountability of the people that receive them. Even when I spoke to him at eleven o'clock last night, he was trying to find out how he could lay his hands on this money so that he would be able to give it out himself in that province.
With regard to the question as to whether only 1% of the funds has been distributed, that is quite true. In fact, it is 0,6% or 0,8%. That is an utter failure. Really, it is worse than any other thing. I would have understood if it was 40%. When I was doing matric at school, people were always struggling to get 40% to pass. But 1% is unacceptable and unjustifiable.
As far as the question of the money from the Dutch government is concerned, 11% of it has been spent, and I think I might agree with the hon member. As early as August, September last year, I ordered the previous director- general to give me a report on this money. There are problems with regard to how it was used, even that 11%, hence the audit and the investigation in general. We want to find out what happened. I do not want to hide anything. We will talk to the Dutch and we will make it public.
Of course, in general, as the hon member said, I must carry the can, and I think I am carrying it, and it is not nice to carry the can for all this. It is quite obvious I would not ask the New NP to be quiet on this, as there is no justification whatsoever for this underspending. To the hon Mr Durr I wish to say I do not think that we are ascribing this failure to apartheid at all. As I have said, the ANC takes responsibility for this.
In so far as all the other issues that have been raised here are concerned, I think the steps that we have taken are quite clear.
I would now like to respond to Mr Marais. One of the things that I decided to do when I came into that department - I heard him talk about this also at the last meeting of the Minmec - was to devolve funds to provinces. I feel much better personally about this point. I do not have to account for everything. Mr Marais will have to account for it if I send the funds to him and to provinces.
In view of what the public felt, I gave an order a long time ago, but in the process, I had to find out from the IDT how much money they had. To be honest with members, in so far as the IDT is concerned, they did come to me to say that they were trying to help where they had been asked to do so. They had, from the beginning, attempted to set up a network in order to be able to distribute the funds to everybody. However, in the process of distribution, everything has not worked as well as they would have liked.
Secondly, when I started putting pressure on the officials, as the hon member correctly said, they wanted the IDT to just throw the money into the provinces. Ms Gwagwa, the head of the IDT, felt that she could not do that because she would not be able to account for it. That is a reality. I told her to do what she thought was best.
I have been talking to the officials for quite some time now about the fact that this money cannot just remain there because I foresaw the situation in which we are at the present moment. When I heard that there was an auditing process, I ordered them to give all the necessary information regarding these issues to the Auditor-General.
So, as far as I am concerned, all along since October, during the consultative process, we have been in consultation with civil society on the question of its participating in deciding the distribution of these funds to the different communities. At the beginning, most of them, with one exception, were not so sure about their participation because they did not want to be seen to be performing Government functions as such.
However, since just before the Auditor-General's report came out, I have been talking to church leaders to ask them to participate in the distribution of whatever funds are left over. I have met Bishop Dandala, who was representing the SA Council of Churches or SACC. I also have met Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane. I have also met the Catholic Bishops Conference, Muslim religious organisations and Kagiso Trust.
More importantly, we have been working very closely with Sangoco to ensure that it participates in the whole process. They will come back to me after they have met the director-general and the top officials to come up with a plan in order to assist us with the distribution of this money, and to ensure that they are both able to account for the money and that it reaches the right people at the right time.
In other words, I want to say very clearly that we are not trying to hide anything in so far as these funds are concerned. We are going to keep Government, the Cabinet in general, and Parliament as a whole informed about how we use this money. There will be as much transparency as possible because I do not see what we would gain by hiding anything.
The more the funds are out of our hands the better for us. I think the department itself needs drastic action and it needs to change its way of thinking and working. More importantly, the oversight function of parliamentarians, of this House, needs to be exercised as far as the department is concerned. It is actually necessary, in view of the fact that the majority here come from the poorest of the poor, that members give more attention to the work that is being done by that department, and ensure that all those people who ought to receive or have access to the resources of the department do get this, specifically all children, the elderly and the disabled.
As far as the Eastern Cape is concerned, I have even been there to look at the infrastructure of the welfare departments in the Eastern Cape. I think members of this House who come from that area and the Northern Province should try to go and see how and where the people receive their grants. It is very disgraceful, very embarrassing. No wonder there is so much fraud. No wonder that people are robbed. People are getting their grants in an open veld. It is terribly, terribly embarrassing what happens in those two provinces and I think some are of KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga. There is a problem in the Northern Province and the Eastern Cape, but, together with my colleagues in the provinces, I think we can work as a team to correct whatever deficiencies exist.
We have no personal interest whatsoever - and I also doubt whether the national Government has any such interest - in taking over the functions and the powers of the provinces. Instead we want to empower and strengthen those provinces and we would like those provinces to work as closely as possible with their local governments so that the services that ought to be received by the majority of our people are received.
More care should be given to the weakest members of our society such as the elderly, children, the disabled and all other people. More needs to be done on the issue of Aids amongst ourselves and within our communities. [Applause.]