Chairperson and hon members, thank you very much. Let me say to the Deputy Minister of Transport that one of the reasons why we support the need for those workers to be out there is because we have always believed that a trade union federation must be a home for all workers regardless of political persuasion.
We hope that Cope members who are there will be welcomed as bona fide members of Cosatu and that they will not leave, unless they are asked to leave that federation, which many of them have built with their soil and toil.
We are all agreed on the need to monitor and evaluate government's work for a number of reasons: to see the extent to which the government is implementing its election promises; to see the extent to which it implements its election mandate as articulated during the inaugural state of the nation address; to determine the impact of such programmes in improving the lives of South Africans - many of whom have no water, sanitation, jobs and shelter, many of whom do not know where their next meal is going to come from, and are worried about the quality of the education and health of their children; to see whether the resource allocations match the rhetoric.
To ensure effective monitoring and evaluation, you need to set appropriate goals; goals that match the election promise, that raise the bar rather than merely complying with the injunction. For example, it is one thing to speak of the creation of half a million job opportunities between June and December; it's another to have a plan for attaining it. It is even more important to ensure that these jobs are not merely about digging and closing up the same hole, but that they add to the improvement of infrastructure.
Furthermore, such monitoring needs to deal with how a job opportunity is calculated. For instance, if I am employed for four weeks and later replaced over the next 11 months by 11 other people, we are calculated as 12 people with 12 job opportunities, yet all that happened was the amelioration of my plight for a month. Surely this is not how the half a million job opportunities by December are supposed to be achieved; at least I hope not.
No wonder two months after the statement was made from this very podium, government confirmed what we have always said; that this is but a pipe dream.
This is owing, in part, to the absence of planning appropriately, and being more concerned with scoring brownie points with the electorate.
Another example is the promise to reach 80% of the people who need antiretroviral treatment therapy by 2011. To come back within two months and say that such a goal will not be realised shows, once more, either poor planning or thumb-sucking of figures. Antiretroviral drugs are very important; but improving the quality of health care, access and employing more health workers, especially clinicians, is much more important.
Furthermore, one of the challenges in monitoring and evaluating is not only in terms of those areas that we have spoken about, Minister, it is about the one who is being evaluated. It is one thing to try and focus on the public servants, but another to be able to say that the contract that the President has is with the Ministers and Deputy Ministers. Put crudely, his contract is with the Cabinet. We must be able to say what the measure is to that particular Cabinet.
We need to rather focus on the real, hard issues - halving poverty and unemployment by 2014. To what extent does that become a reality? We can then focus on the number of jobs that need to be created - permanent jobs, decent jobs not as a slogan, but as a commitment, because that is how you alleviate poverty and unemployment. I thank you. [Applause.]