Hon Chair, hon Minister, Deputy Minister, hon members, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, from the outset I would like to make a clarion call on the hon Minister, her department and the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans to make a special effort to implement the necessary instruments to give effect to the benefits of military veterans and restore their dignity and honour to what it should be. [Applause.] First and foremost, let us never short-change our military veterans.
I also want to point out the inaccuracies, discrepancies and inconsistencies within the documents that we are afforded to study and interrogate, namely the Alternate Benefit Programme, which are the budget and strategic plan documents. There are any number of mistakes, irregularities, inconsistencies and a lack of reconciliation. Even within the budget report itself, the figures don't tally.
This speaks to a department that says that there are six high-risk areas, as indicated last year. This year the high-risk areas have increased to nine. When we speak about manpower and being able to perform, we speak about high-risk number two, which is the lack of adequately skilled and dependable human capital that can actually do the job.
There are four pages allocated to 23 indicators and targets which had to be amended and redefined on pages 85 to 88, table 18 of the ABP, saying that all those indicators that have been considered before and currently had to be reviewed because they were not thought through very well. This simply means that we have a lack of capable human capital to actually execute the job.
However, it goes further than this. This entire process is a rigorous process, one that goes through a reporting and budget cycle; one that is referred from the leadership of the department to the National Treasury, the Auditor-General of South Africa and to the Presidency's Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation as well as Administration. It goes through a lengthy process and comes back, and yet we still find all these mistakes.
I urge the leadership and echelons that are responsible for signing off this document in their names to make sure the information is correct, and that goes from the hon Minister right down to senior management, every single signature included there. The director-general, DG, even attested that every single piece of information in the report can be audited, and that it is absolutely true and correct. That is not the case. Let us clean up our documents, especially those that are for public consumption, the ones that we sign our names to and which we want to be proud of, and the ones that represent our department. Secondly, that speaks also to high-risk number six, which is, of course, monitoring and evaluation.
I want to speak about the regulations. The benefits can only be implemented if the regulations are in place. There are also other important instruments that must prevail, such as the memorandum of understanding, and service level agreements.
I convey appreciation to the hon Deputy Minister for indicating that there has been achievement and progress regarding the social cluster and the signing of the memoranda. However, this has been the case only for the national departments. We have about 14 departments besides the provincial departments, local government, and the private sector, where we still need to have service level agreements and memoranda of understanding in place. This needs to prevail.
The health care policy, bursary education policy and the transport policy are all issues that must set the environment for the regulations to be implemented. A means test, memorandums of understanding and service level agreements have to be implemented. I urge the department to appoint the relevant people necessary to execute the job.
In 2011 the department had only 17 people; 43 had not yet been appointed. In 2012, 29 or 27 were appointed and 43 were not appointed by the end of that financial year. We are looking at 135 people who are being appointed now to come to the full complement of 169. However, the ABP contradicted that when it said that only 90% would be appointed in the two outer years.
This department seriously lacks the capacity and needs all the manpower to execute its duties. Why are we delaying the process? The Department of the Public Service and Administration has all the generic contracts, job descriptions, salary scales and everything in place. Why the delay? If there are specific requirements for a job, let us deal with those specifics. Consultants were appointed, but what did they actually execute? Thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]