Hon Chairperson, hon Minister and Deputy Minister, hon members and distinguished guests, at the outset, let me remind this House what the primary role of GCIS is. It is to co-ordinate government communication systems that ensure that the public is informed about government's policies, plans and programmes.
Purposeful, as the hon Muthambi has said, and concise communication between government and its citizens is a moral obligation - to which I agree - that originates from the first principles of democracy. Since people are affected by decisions made by governmental bodies, they have a right to know how the decisions were made. In his budget speech last year, the hon Minister said, and I quote:
It is as important for government to create tangible and practical opportunities for a better life as it is to let people know, in the first place, that these opportunities exist.
However, this should also allow for the views and opinions of the public to be heard. Therefore, let us investigate how government, through the GCIS, informs the citizens about these opportunities.
The GCIS, in addition to pamphlets printed by individual departments, as we see during budget debates, primarily attempts to do this by printing 20,4 million newspapers annually and, to their credit, just over 5 000 copies in Braille. I want to emphasise this: printing 20,4 million newspapers, the Vukuzenzele, as many people have said.
I emphasised the printing thereof because the distribution of these 20,4 million newspapers to the public is a different story. One of the methods of distribution is through an agreement with the SA Post Office to host "information stands" populated not only with the Vukuzenzele, but other government information, be it from Home Affairs on how to access the many services they offer, to Health and other social services offered by government.
I referred to this last year, and I want to repeat it today. This is a good initiative because it is well known that the SA Post Office has a huge footprint across the country, and in particular in our rural areas. Unfortunately, our oversight visits have revealed that these information stands are often not present at all in post offices, and where they are found, they are usually empty!
Unlike the comment made by the hon Schneemann when he said people have taken and read them, which is in fact not the case, because when we ask questions from the Post Office staff, they simply say that they haven't received any information. So, there was nothing for people to take to begin with. This method of communication does not allow for the views and opinions of members of the public to be heard.
Communications functions that are considered strong typically do not rely on traditional print media alone to communicate with external stakeholders. Such strong functions develop innovative initiatives and place a high priority on electronic communications. While not speaking about social media specifically, the high levels of adoption of social media require government communications functions to understand and use social media as part of the overall communications mix.
I am therefore encouraged by the acknowledgement from the GCIS in its strategic plan that the growth in digital and mobile communications presents government with the opportunity and challenge to engage interactively with citizens and stakeholders, and to join in social conversations rather than produce one-way communication.
Unfortunately, the GCIS has not indicated yet how they intend to utilise this platform to communicate with communities. The other method of two-way communication, particularly for the older generation, is face to face interaction. In this regard, and a lot of my colleagues have touched on it, the Thusong Service Centres should fill this vacuum.
I touched on this last year as well, but since there hasn't been much improvement generally, it is worth repeating again. These centres are the main vehicles that are used to provide services in predominantly rural communities and underserviced townships. The vision of the Thusong programme is to ensure access to integrated government information and services to build a better quality of life for all.
Unfortunately, the efficient and sustainable use of the vast majority of these centres remains a service that is provided on paper only. Committee oversight visits revealed the following - and I have taken this from committee reports, so some of the issues mentioned around Thusong centres by my colleagues make me wonder if we were on the same oversight visits.
However, some of the issues revealed and adopted by the committee in the committee reports are the following: There is underutilisation of centres in that many centres provide minimal services whilst some, as I mentioned in last year's debate, are in fact locked up and stand abandoned; various Thusong centres are operating without lease agreements in place, and the ownership of the building being used is often unknown or in dispute, contributing to the lack of maintenance because nobody takes responsibility. Where such ownership or authority is known, rent by service providers, including GCIS, has not been paid for many years.
In Mpumalanga, centres are owned by the provincial department of local government. In the Free State, they are owned by the department of the premier, while in North West and Gauteng, the ownership of the structures are vested in the local municipalities. In the Western Cape, the Thusong Service Centre programme was transferred from the department of social development to the department of local government.
Because of the problems described above, it is often difficult to identify the authority that must take responsibility and exercise oversight over these centres. That brings us to the all-important question: What should be done to ensure integrated service delivery through the Thusong centres? Well, I will tell you what can be done.
In the DA-controlled Western Cape province, the directorate of service delivery in the department of local government has established a Provincial Intersectoral Steering Committee, PISSC, comprising the national, provincial departments and parastatals. This committee co-ordinates the programme provincially and provides strategic and operational implementation guidelines to secure the effective programme rollout. The committee also facilitates transversal co-operation across departments in the three spheres of government and provides leadership with regard to the provincial service delivery footprint.
The directorate has also established the Thusong Service Centre Management Forum, comprising all local municipalities and the Thusong anchor departments. The purpose of the forum is to guide the operational implementation of the Thusong Service Centre programme and to share best practice and lessons learnt regarding integrated service delivery across the province. Hon Minister, we can learn from the working examples in the Western Cape. [Applause.]
Crucially, two-way communication allows citizens to monitor the state's activities; to enter into dialogue with the state on issues that matter to them; and to influence political outcomes. If GCIS can achieve this, they will succeed in their goal to be an enabler of citizen engagement, ensuring that as many people as possible have access to information. They will succeed in becoming the primary facilitator to participative government that is there to empower people, facilitate dialogue and participation, and make the information that people need easily available so that they may assert their rights and express their needs. I thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]