Chairperson, hon Minister and hon members, the Minister rightly referred to the progress that saw the department move from a long history of qualified audit opinions to a clean audit for the 2010-11 financial year.
However, our current system of auditing does not report on the standard of service delivery and efficiency. The DA has had to appoint a full-time person to assist members of the public with a growing number of labour- related queries when they, as a last resort, turn to us to intervene and help resolve issues relating to the services rendered by the department and its entities.
Minister, you have referred to the Unemployment Insurance Fund as an entity of excellence. Yet, based on my personal experience over the last few months, client service remains a cause for grave concern. Listen to this: an e-mail sent on 20 March this year to ufilingsupport@labour.gov.za - the address given to members of the public on the website - was only responded to after 35 days. I have been waiting for two months for a response to two messages left on the answering service of the sharecall number of that very same service. I've also had no response to a fax that was sent more than two months ago.
Minister, this standard of service is absolutely shocking. Could some of the money used for your expensive imbizos - where hundreds of people were seen leaving the premises with arms full of food and cool drinks - be used to improve client services?
This very same UIF is also giving back only 50% of what it has levied from those who have lost their jobs. What is more, after the severe job losses of the recent recession, the fund is still sitting on assets to the value of R50 billion! Losing one's job is traumatic enough, and it is a shame that the unemployed must suffer while the funds are there to alleviate that suffering. [Interjections.]