Chairperson, we've also got another question here that I'll answer in a bit more detail but there is definitely consensus, if you look at a statement the Minister for the Public Service and Administration has made, that for qualified people in government we want to create an occupation-specific dispensation, an OSD. That has been accepted in principle. The department has received at least two or three verbal report-back.
In fact, we had a meeting about a month ago with the last reporter to try and look at the practicalities of this and the institutions such as the department itself, the prosecuting authority, the Legal Aid Board and Chapter 9 institutions where there are legal professionals and other departments as well.
One of the problems we have - Mr Rodman who heads our legislative drafting is here and he'll tell you - is that just as soon as they get young, black and female lawyers into that section of the department and train them, then the provinces in particular snap them up and employ them at two or three levels higher than they were paying them because those skills are needed so badly. Now this has created a huge destabilisation in government.
Under apartheid they had a very clever system - well, it's not a clever system; it was a very oppressive system, but it worked effectively. Let me rather say that in the sense that when you were in the department they controlled completely whether you could move somewhere or not. You couldn't just apply for a post. If you applied for something they'd say no, you're not going to move there. That's how they kept their system balanced.
Under the new democracy, we've just opened up everything. So everyone is moving everywhere else. As soon as you get a chance to get employed two or three levels higher, then you should really be employed. I just gave an example; those people with two years' experience should never be working in the regional courts as regional prosecutors. They just don't have the experience. They're going to come up against senior lawyers and so on and they wouldn't have a chance in this matter.
So what we've got is this dispensation that's being worked out but it's become very difficult to try and get everyone to buy into the idea that not only should there be one salary level but then, if you're working in, say, legal aid and you're at a certain level, if you want a promotion somewhere else in another institution, you must be at the same level. If we don't have a rule like that it's not going to work because otherwise people are just going to get higher salaries again, but they'll employ them at a higher level as well.
So it's a very complicated system we're looking at. Let me just lastly say, what it doesn't solve is the problem between magistrates and prosecutors. You see, over the past few years the magistrates' salaries have rapidly jumped higher. A magistrate and a prosecutor always used to get the same salary under the previous dispensation. So there was no reason for them to move.
In the past few years, particularly with the introduction of that allowance, a magistrate now would get R70 000 to R80 000 more for a car allowance than a prosecutor at the same level of five years' experience.
So what we have now is that we train prosecutors until they have five years' experience - they've just become competent prosecutors - when they all apply to become magistrates, because at the same level, just by getting the new job, they get R70 000 to R80 000 more than they would be getting as a prosecutor.
We haven't solved that problem yet. We don't have a solution for it at the moment and it's something we're going to seriously have to look at. In fact, I've got statistics here that show you - let me actually give you the figures - in 2002-2003 there was something like three or four prosecutors who became magistrates. This year, with this new allowance, 43 senior prosecutors were appointed as magistrates. So it's a completely fragmented salary system that is causing it to implode on itself.
That is why we're trying to create this occupation-specific dispensation but we're going to have to get everyone to buy into that once we've got that and we're giving them higher salaries, it means that if they want to move to the other post they must move at the same level and not go higher unless there's been a specific evaluation done which shows that they should go to a higher post. Otherwise we'll have the same problems with the system.