Mr Speaker, in the debate on the Vote of the Presidency, the hon Deputy Minister, Jeremy Cronin, revealed himself to be an expert on body language. By merely looking at the more than 70 DA MPs, he managed to determine how each individual one of them enjoyed or didn't enjoy a particular speech. However, his contribution was mainly based on race and he did not really discuss the Appropriation Bill. So, unlike him, I will discuss the Appropriation Bill.
The Appropriation Bill provides money to government departments to be spent on achieving governmental priorities. Spending of the budget on the priorities set by government must not only address injustices of the past but must also lead to reconciliation, better service delivery and job creation. The question then is whether these objectives have been met with the money provided. In the case of many departments, the answer unfortunately is no.
Unlike the DA-run Western Cape government, where all departments and the province achieved clean audits, we still find a continuous stream of qualified audit reports of government entities. Incurring irregular, wasteful and unauthorised expenditure continues unabated. In the main, many government departments are failing South Africa's diverse population with service delivery.
Let us then look at the facts. At a presentation to the Standing Committee on Appropriations, the Public Service Commission informed the committee that many departments are spending their allocated budgets at year-end to fairly high levels, but fail to meet the predetermined performance objectives or outputs set by themselves in their own strategic and annual plans. I will highlight just a few of the departments mentioned by the Public Service Commission in this regard.
The SAPS, for instance, spent 100% of their budget, but only achieved 59% of their performance targets. The Department of Trade and Industry spent 93,6% of their budget, but met 51% of their targets. The Department of Justice spent 97,7% and 50% of their outputs were met. The Department of Basic Education spent 89,4%, but met only 47% of their outputs. The Department of Energy spent 97,9% of their budget, but only reached 47% of their targets. The Department of Public Works spent 89,8%, but only reached 44% of their targets.