Chairperson, hon Ministers present, hon Members of Parliament, the Military Veterans Bill before Parliament signifies the ongoing work to provide support and care to military veterans and their dependants since our budget debate last year.
The month of April was fated to be the month in which two of South Africa's outstanding soldiers for nonracialism and democracy met their violent deaths from barbaric apartheid murderers, namely Thembisile, alias Chris Hani, and Solomon Mahlangu. Allow me therefore, Chairperson, to dedicate my remarks today to their exemplary lives and their legends and to the tribulations of their families.
Cabinet has confirmed our interim policy for military veterans and the machinery to deliver these benefits and services, as enunciated in the Bill. The costing of the Bill has since been finalised and approved by Cabinet. It gives the Ministry great pleasure that the Bill has received overwhelming support from South Africans across the spectrum and from all sides, and we have taken note of submissions which point to areas which deserve further improvement.
Contrary to the scare raised by some in the media around this Bill, stakeholders and the broader public seem to have figured out the real issues themselves, in spite of the heavy fog of negativity which threatened to drown the Bill in its inchoate stages. The submissions from members of the public and observations made by members of the portfolio committee pick up the real challenges that this intervention by government seeks to address.
The nub of the proposed government policy on military veterans is to accord a decent life to South Africans who are destitute today and are part of the needy masses, because they were at the coalface of the apartheid conflict of the past, in particular those who fought hard to end apartheid.
Once again, on behalf of the Ministry, we should express our appreciation for the commendable work delivered by the Minister's task team on military veterans. The dedication and passion displayed by all its members and the desire to find a credible and sustainable solution to the problems of military veterans in South Africa has won you our admiration in the Ministry and in the Department of Defence and Military Veterans.
The tabling of the Military Veterans Bill has brought a sigh of relief to many families and communities. The previous efforts by government to support demobilised soldiers were grossly inadequate. In all fairness, the many unsung heroes and heroines of yesterday's fierce battles against apartheid rule and their courageous families have, to this day, borne the pain and sacrifices they made with dignity and patience. The wise decision by government to correct what is a glaring and embarrassing omission to all of us can never be too late. We can always draw comfort from the experiences of many other countries that it is better late than never, when it comes to the neglect of former combatants or demobilised soldiers.
I wish to take this opportunity, on the occasion of the Defence and Military Veterans budget debate, to state for the record and for the benefit of South Africa's broad public that the estimated cost of the Military Veterans Bill currently before Parliament is R1,6 billion only, over the three-year Medium-Term Expenditure Framework budget period. The projected annual spending of the outer year of the MTEF period is expected to be a constant projected average of approximately R500 million.
I wish to avoid the temptation to comment on the Bill before benefiting from the wisdom of the portfolio committee, which has been enriched by public hearings. However, I am fairly confident that considerations underpinning the policy recommendations from which the Bill derives are sound, well informed and carefully chosen.
One of the important priorities of our work over the period under review was - as the Minister already indicated - the setting up of the Department of Military Veterans. After Cabinet endorsed the policy framework report in June 2010, we proceeded to submit the structure of the new department and its posts to the Department of the Public Service and Administration and to Treasury for consideration.
Once approval was attained, the advertising of posts and the process to populate the structure commenced. We have been hamstrung by capacity constraints from moving swiftly in executing this work. However, assistance from the Department of Defence's human resource division has been solicited.
We have commenced the process of establishing work streams together with line-function departments which are responsible for some of the benefits that must be delivered to military veterans. After elaborating on the operational details of the policy pertaining to their respective sectors, these work streams will assume permanent status as work groups through which the Department of Military Veterans interfaces and collaborates with these line-function departments to deliver services and benefits to military veterans.
Almost every day a military veteran who was destitute dies. The benefits we are talking about are needed now. As a relief measure, the Council on Defence, led by the Minister, tasked the Department of Military Veterans, in collaboration with the SA Military Health Service within the Defence Force, to roll out health services to all military veterans who are 60 and older and to those with chronic ailments and life-threatening medical conditions, through access to all our military hospitals from 16 December 2010.
We have assisted the SA National Military Veterans Association, SANMVA, to launch provincial structures of its affiliate associations in order for us to develop the capacity to reach the vast and disparate community of military veterans in all nine provinces. Five provincial chapters of SANMVA have been launched since the department started functioning.
Critical work around the consolidation of the database of military veterans has commenced. However, the associations with whom we must collaborate are struggling to expedite this process because of their inadequate administration capacities, among other challenges, as a result of a shortage of resources.
The challenge we have is that there are no statistics in government on military veterans. Reliable data on the profile of our community of military veterans with regard to, among other things, age composition, economic status and educational qualifications, must still be compiled. This demographic information is key to the elaboration of plans around programmes and projects.
The Department of Military Veterans' budget allocation over the MTEF period has since been revised by Treasury. It has increased from the original R20 million in the 2010-11 financial year to R45,4 million in the 2011-12 - financial year instead of the original R30 million, as hon members would recall. The increase in expenditure emanates from the posts to be filled in this financial year and other inputs required for the department to execute its mandate, including office equipment and accommodation.
Across the MTEF period, Treasury has approved R45,3 million for the 2011-12 financial year, R51,2 million for the 2012-13 financial year, and R52,591 million for the 2013-14 financial year.
In collaboration with the portfolio committee, we hope that we will make resources available for benefits to be rolled out to military veterans. In the process of realising this policy, it is our commitment to contribute significantly to the five Medium-Term Strategic Framework priorities of government, namely health, education, jobs, rural development and safety, and to the 12 derivative government outcomes.
The Department of Defence has a property portfolio of more than 430 000 hectares of land, approximately 35 000 buildings and more than 12 million square metres of surface area within buildings. This sizable estate portfolio is currently under the management of the Department of Public Works, as the Minister alluded to earlier, on whom rests the responsibility to perform Total Life Cycle Management, TLCM, of all state-owned immovable assets.
The state of the Department of Defence facilities has deteriorated to unacceptable levels of dilapidation. A report from the Department of Labour inspectorate in 2007 indicated that more than 35% of the Department of Defence's military barracks was not fit for human occupancy. In 2010, the investigation by the Interim National Defence Force Service Commission, referred to earlier, into conditions of service for SANDF members came to a similar conclusion in that the state of disrepair of defence facilities was unacceptable.
The main cause of the above-mentioned state of affairs is the lack of resources to perform proper maintenance and repairs, thereby accumulating a maintenance backlog situation that is even more difficult to get out of. At the end of the 2009-10 financial year, the maintenance backlog of the Department of Defence facilities was already above R13 billion. Furthermore, the maintenance budget allocation model used by the Department of Public Works is not based on any relationship between the department's contribution in accommodation charges and allocated maintenance funds by departments.
In the 2009-10 financial year, the Department of Defence paid R932 million to the Department of Public Works, and only received R465 million for rates and taxes. The rest of the paid accommodation charges were reallocated to other departments by the Department of Public Works. This means effectively that departments or institutions with a smaller property portfolio may get allocated higher amounts than the Department of Defence.
To remedy this malady, my Minister, Minister Sisulu, has tasked me to set up the capability within the Department of Defence to ensure that it has the requisite capacity to take over the facilities maintenance responsibility from the Department of Public Works. This involves developing a migration plan that will see the Department of Defence incrementally taking over this responsibility.
This measure by the Department of Defence will also assist in alleviating the load from the Department of Public Works. The Department of Defence is one of the largest departments in terms of its property footprint, and has a maintenance backlog of more than R13 billion. This is certainly one of the conspicuous concerns on the Department of Public Works' radar screen. Thank you, Chairperson. [Time expired.] [Applause.]