Deputy Speaker, Deputy President, Minister and hon members, following my colleagues and hon members in this debate I rise on yet another sad day. It is a sad day because we have lost another leader, one of the calibre of Kader Asmal. Receiving this terrible news last night left us with a sense of hopelessness that South Africa has suffered a loss and yet another blow.
In tabling the report earlier on, the Chairperson of the Standing Committee indicated that as a committee we have deliberated on this budget and Appropriation Bill. Our collective concern, collective findings and collective recommendations contained in this report speak volumes. In tabling the Budget in February 2011, the Minister of Finance highlighted many positives and, of course, some negatives that require skilful and level-headed management in terms of oversight moving forward. These are the negatives of underexpenditure, corruption and, of course, the bill for the public service, which continues to rise.
As Members of Parliament our task of oversight is clear cut. We have to walk the talk. We have to insist that value for money is realised by all the departments and that Ministers are held accountable in this regard. We have the task to monitor and evaluate whether government delivery programmes produce noticeable output.
Cope is worried that after 16 years the departments are not yet level 4 auditable. We are seriously concerned that level 5 and 6 audits for many departments remain a distant dream. We are very perturbed to see that performance and real measurable output remain a moving target. Without a measurable objective we cannot have an effective oversight role over the department and the executive. If we cannot increase performance from compliance to value for money, protest against poor service delivery will remain the order of the day.
We urge government to speed up their adherence to the output and audit performance and meet the outcome objectives of the budget programme across the five key priorities. The norms and standards, as the measuring stick for all departments, must be realised, finalised and implemented.
It is unacceptable that our education still fails our future generation. Whether it is about the quality of infrastructure, mud schools or putting teachers to task, the committee's finding is telling a worrying story. The absence of teachers, with or without permission, from the classroom, leave learners with only a negative result at the end of the year. Deputy Speaker, we need to insist that the national Department of Education delivers infrastructure, electricity, water, transport and teachers for quality output now. We are gravely worried that the Department of Education's classrooms for effective learning and teaching leave much to be desired.
We must now demand that the Department of Public Works produces and tables the asset register detailing our public assets. Billions have gone into this work, with little to show.
We now need to see the government putting the developmental state into action. It is our view that a developmental or activist state, which capacitates the people, remains a solution. The practical training of people who will essentially do the job is required as a pillar for a developmental state. Cope wants to see a clean audit from all the departments. However, a clean audit does not mean a quality service and effective service delivery. We are very concerned about the lack of sanitation in some of the schools.
Deputy Speaker, if we do not enforce the value-for-money oversight, we will continue to see the wastage of money that has been spoken about, such as the more than R250 million that was paid just towards penalties. How much could the delivery have been improved as a result of the lack of officials in terms of delivering services?
Deputy Speaker, one wonders whether the Public Finance Management Act, PFMA, provision should not be re-invoked in order to recover this money from the officials in charge who are failing our people. As we move forward we will make sure that we intensify the oversight over the Executive to make sure that this budget that has been presented here delivers the results to our poor communities across the country. I thank you.