Hon Chairperson, let me thank members of the committee and members of the House for the attention they have given to the debate and the attention which the committee give to the work we are doing.
Listening to members here, I found it very clear who those members are who follow the work of the department and who don't. But we can't blame people who aren't able to follow; there is a lot of work to be done in Parliament. There are a lot of issues to be dealt with and we appreciate that.
I would like to assure the hon Holomisa, in response to the comments he made with regard to staffing, that we will try our best to maintain and retain a good staff complement. But, obviously, given the amount of work and the type of work we are doing, there is a lot of interest in and poaching of the professionals that we have. This is because they do a lot of work and there is a lot of innovation going on there. We should anticipate that international institutions, universities and other research institutions are likely to be sitting on our necks trying to get our personnel. However, we will try to make sure that even when we replace those who leave we get relevant people.
Let me comment on the issue of the use of consultants. For us it's unavoidable, because most of the work we do is work which must be validated by independent experts. If we want to do research work to evaluate a particular department, it doesn't help for us to do it ourselves. We need to get external people who will focus on it, be independent and give us a report. However, we should have the capacity ourselves to interrogate the report in order to ensure that we are able to implement what is supposed to be implemented. To that extent we will minimise such use, but to some extent we still have to rely on consultants. I was still in Limpopo in 2000 when we had the floods there. I was standing on the bank of the river with Lt-Col Lotter. A gentleman dropped his shoes into the river by mistake. We were busy trying to build a temporary pedestrian bridge and the river was still in flood. When we explained to him that we couldn't risk soldiers to get in and look for his shoes in the river, he said this government was not delivering services and it was not interested in helping people! [Laughter.]
There was another incident. In the run-up to the 2010 World Cup I was the MEC for Economic Development in Limpopo. We were preaching the gospel that people and small businesses were going to benefit in 2010 and so on. In one meeting an undertaker said to me - however, before that time I didn't know he was an undertaker - that government was not doing anything to make sure that they benefited from the 2010 World Cup. He ended up with a question, "I am an undertaker; how are you going to help me benefit from the 2010 World Cup?" [Laughter.]
Hon George, not everything we see as being something that must be done, must be done. Otherwise we would lose focus. We are not building a department of prophets or fortune-tellers. We are building a department that is focused on scientific investigation and is looking for scientific solutions. We are building a department that will be determined to work together with partners - those in Parliament, stakeholders outside there and everybody else - to make sure that we make an improvement.
The President said to us, being part of his mandate, that our work knows no political party. There is no pothole of the DA and pothole of the ANC. A pothole is a pothole, finish and "klaar". [finish.] [Interjections.]
People want services. We are working with the Western Cape. A comment was made by a member of the DA here that no action was being taken. There are also departments in the Western Cape that have not been able to pay, and nobody has been arrested in terms of that section in the Act. This is what is important to us. We are not worried about that; our main aim is that we have to service all government institutions regardless of who is in power at that particular time, provide relevant information and data required for people to make decisions, and make improvements.
Thank you very much for the contributions which you have made and the support which we receive from committee members. We also thank them for the support that they give by way of getting to the details of the work of the department. Thank you very much. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.