Chairperson, the committee would like to acknowledge the fact that the Auditor-General's report indicated four reasons for qualifications in the financial year 2008-09. This was reduced in 2009-10 to three reasons for qualifications, and in the financial year 2010-11 there is only one reason for qualification. This is a clear sign that there is consistent improvement within the department.
Notwithstanding that, there are seven areas of concern that we would like to identify, the first being that the budget allocation of the department remains misaligned to the White Paper objectives. As the committee we urge the department to better balance its focus on rehabilitation and reintegration with that of security. The second area is the excessive use of consultants within the department. The portfolio committee thinks that the cost of hiring consultants is not sustainable.
Furthermore, the department needs to urgently embark on a strategy to ensure that IT skills are transferred from consultants to employees, and that the department devise a strategy of retaining the skills that have been transferred from the department.
The third area is that the committee is concerned about the vacancy rate, especially in IT and in finance. The finance department has a vacancy rate of 54%, and in IT it's close to 100%. This is in direct contradiction of the President's call to urgently fill all vacancies within government departments.
The slow pace of filling funded posts results either in unspent funds at the end of the financial year, or a common practice of rerouting these funds to projects that were not approved in the original budget. Filling the funded posts needs to be speeded up and vacancy targets need to be met.
Over the past four years the Department of Correctional Services has had no less than four national commissioners. This, together with constant change in top leadership within the department, has resulted in leadership instability which has a negative impact on continuity and institutional memory. Stability in the upper echelons of the department's management must be ensured.
Correctional services is a security cluster department. The committee is concerned that the department employs in excess of 40 000 employees, and of these less than 4 000 have been vetted. This is an undesirable situation. The committee urges the departments relevant to vetting to ensure that this situation is rectified urgently.
Finally, the department has experienced serious misconduct or ill- discipline by officials at all levels: sexual harassment, sleeping on duty, being on duty under the influence of illegal drugs, corruption and fraud. These are some of the examples of misconduct within this department. Very few officials, even though found guilty, have been dismissed, with many only receiving written warnings. The committee urges the department to ensure that the sanction is appropriate to the nature of the misconduct.
Having said this, we present the report to this august House for adoption. Siyabonga. [Thank you.] [Applause.]
There was no debate.