House Chairperson, Minister, the senior officials of the Department of Public Works, hon members, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I would like to first thank the hon members who have already spoken before me. I want to say to Mr Masango and Mr Mnguni - my children like to say, "from tokoloshe to technology" - that I hope that when we leave this room they will make sure to join me so that I can assist them to move from the tokoloshe stage to the technology stage. Maybe in the next debate we will get something different from them.
In the previous budget we indicated that for the first time in this government Deputy Ministers are allocated responsibilities. We requested then that this House should judge us on the performance the tasks allocated to us, which the Minister announced in his previous budget. Amongst the responsibilities the Deputy Minister was given was to take the asset register and do asset management, which a lot of members were complaining about. Hence I felt that it is important, hon Minister, to take them from the stage of tokoloshe to technology.
I'm extending an invitation to the members - for the first time we will be seeing this country's electronic asset register. It is out there in the foyer and we would like to make sure that we show members that, at the click of a button, you will know which asset belongs to whom ... [Applause] ... its history, who owned it over the years and, once and for all, put to an end the era when we didn't know what we own. We might not have captured everything, but we know exactly what we own and we are waiting for some of this to be vested.
Let me, once and for all, indicate that vesting is not the responsibility of the Department of Public Works. For us to capture an asset on the register, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform must first vest that asset. Even if we know where the asset is, unless it's vested, we can't capture it. For the last time, I hope members will understand that the vesting process contributes to the delay in us capturing our assets.
Our electronic asset register will assist members to understand that some of these assets belong to the provinces, even though sometimes, because we do not know, we would blame the national Department of Public Works for some of these assets. We are hoping that in the next three years all the assets of this government, with its own unique identity code, will have one single asset register for the state with different spheres so that you are able to understand which assets belong to whom. That will take us a long way in addressing the challenges that we face right now.
I also want to say that, despite the vesting process lying in the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, the Department of Public Works has led the process, as the Minister indicated - and I can proudly announce that this task team has worked very hard - and we do have a draft vesting master plan which will be announced in due course.
A number of members also complained about the issues of rehabilitation and maintenance. As indicated, unlike previously where we had challenges of signing memorandums of understanding or service level agreements later, this time around we proudly stand here today to indicate that 98% of service level agreements and buildings that need to be rehabilitated have already been identified. For the first time we will be on time - on schedule to spend the allocated resources for the rehabilitation and maintenance programme.
I would like to say to hon members that some of us who reside in parliamentary villages enjoy the renovated houses and say to members that, come April 2011, the remaining houses will be fully renovated. We are looking at upgrading the security and we would appreciate it if members could allow us access to their houses so that we would be able to check whether they have telephone lines or not.
Lastly, I hope we will be appointing the long-outstanding management board. As the Minister indicated previously, we are finalising the legalities to enable the Deputy Speaker and the Deputy Minister to be responsible for the parliamentary villages. We hope that members will work with us in establishing their own residence committees to enable us to partner in the running functioning of the parliamentary villages. We also hope that members will kindly pay their rent so that they can complain and so that we can use the money.
HON MEMBERS: Viva! [Applause.]