Hon Speaker, Deputy President, hon Ministers, hon members, today we are debating the Appropriation Bill with a view to adopting the government Budget for 2013-14. The year 2013 remains a year in which we saw big progress towards the capacitating of the committee on appropriations, with the appointment of the director, Professor Jahed, to manage the budget office.
This year we appreciate the leadership that has been provided by the presiding officers, namely, the Speaker and the Chairperson of the NCOP. It is a good but delayed action, we must say.
As the committee, we said before that, without the capacity of the budget office, the amendment of the budget would remain a distant dream that might only come true during the next term, after the 2014 elections. The message for Professor Jahed today is that he should work hard now and capacitate the office in order to be ready for the task ahead.
The committee has engaged with the various departments around the Budget during public hearings. The level of readiness by the departments to align with the National Development Plan, NDP, in terms of their current programmes, is very scanty, to say the least.
The question, going forward, remains the lack of enforceability of the NDP, and the NDP's lack of constraining measures for departments that are deviating from implementing what is being said. The Minister of Finance, given the lack of these measures, will therefore become the police with the power of the Budget to be able to use the budgetary lever to be able to make sure that monies are withdrawn from those departments that are unable to implement the NDP and that these monies are then redirected for good results and action.
The Budget, as we debate it today, is a big budget and can do a lot of things. What remains unresolved is the matter of what the departments are unable to do, which is the issue related to the capacity of the departments to be able to deliver quality service to our people, both black and white. We must state that most of the departments fail to meet the targets of what they plan to deliver. They plan to deliver 100% but, in most cases, only a few departments are able to meet 70% of their targets. Many departments remain within 50% and 60% of achieving their targets. The worse are those departmental clusters that are in the region of meeting 40% of their targets.
It means therefore that the budget that is allocated is not well spent on the intended targets and, as such, there is no value for money. Money ends up being dumped just to make sure that we stay within the baseline budget arrangement.
We need to point out, as we move forward, that according to the protocol, Ministers are accountable for the budget. This protocol, I need to add, is not a people-first protocol. Accountability of Ministers must be measured in terms of what they provide and what they do with the budget.
The new protocol introduced today is actually a Minister-first protocol. It is a protocol of the ruling party which says, that its chairpersons must make sure that Ministers are not embarrassed by being asked serious questions. So what do we have? Sweetheart oversight, and sweetheart questions to departments for their failure to deliver quality service.
We must therefore not blame the people when they protest, demanding what is due to them in terms of service delivery. We are worried to see the departments continuing to use consultants while the government employs 1,3 million public servants. We are worried that billions of rands - R102 billion, as revealed by the Auditor-General - was spent on consultants despite the 1,3 million personnel members employed by the state.
We are very encouraged to see that the departments, particularly that of the Minister of Public Service, have now introduced what is called the school of governance. That shows an understanding of what the NDP suggests should happen.
We are worried, particularly when we see the Ministers undermining the Public Finance Management Act, PFMA. We are worried when we see Ministers giving themselves powers. We have looked in the Public Finance Management Act. We see no provision made for Ministers to withdraw the powers of the Director-General against what is called the accounting officers. There is no provision and, therefore, such a practice must be stopped. It cannot continue, because that is tantamount to an abuse of state power.
In conclusion, it is imperative that we build in a sound monitoring and evaluation process in the Budget, for the realignment of the Budget with national, provincial as well as municipal priorities, including making sure that we achieve the service delivery results as we have been asked to do as Parliament.
However, what we see today can't be allowed to continue happening, and must be stopped. I thank you, Speaker. [Applause.]