Premier Stan Mathabatha in his budget speech on Tuesday said his office has commissioned a number of external service providers to conduct a forensic audit on a number of key issues, investigations of which are at an advanced stage. He said upon completion, decisions will be made and these will be implemented without any fear, favour or prejudice, to bring about a clean administration.
The administration programme in the Office of the Premier is entrusted with the responsibility of providing administrative support to the Premier, Executive Council and the Director-General, in fulfilling their legislative function and promotion of good corporate governance. In this regard, the allocated budget of R145 793 000 will be utilised to strengthen financial management systems, empower the office of the Director-General, Executive Council and the Premier’s Support Unit.
The institutional development programme ensures that policies, processes and systems that enable the provincial administration to deliver services are in place. For that, the Premier’s Office received R139 518 000.
He asked the public to report any incidents of corruption, which include the abuse of state vehicles. “As part of our strategy to root out corruption from the public service, we have recently embarked on an aggressive campaign to brand government vehicles with an anti-corruption message,” he said.
The programme of policy and governance in the Office of the Premier got R R90 975 000 to enable the office to implement the mandate of planning, coordination, monitoring and evaluation. In this area of work, the focus is on inter-governmental relations, provincial policy management, special programmes and programme support policy and governance. The Office’s total budget amounts to R376 286 000.
Mathabatha committed himself and his office to sustain the clean audit outcome received from the Auditor-General the previous financial year with the hope that this will inspire other government departments and municipalities to improve their performance.
He said that the Executive Council has adopted the first ever Provincial Evaluation Plan that will enable them to demonstrate results, outcomes and impact in the implementation of government service delivery programmes.
Mathabatha said the tendency of misplacing public servants in terms of their skills, qualifications and experience does much disservice to the public service. He said a preliminary report by the Public Service Commission on a competency assessment of all Senior Management Service employees has been finalised. “We should be able to report in due course on these findings and appropriate course of action,” he said.
He committed to fill all vacant positions of Head of Departments and the finalisation of all pending disciplinary cases against some HODs. Mathabatha said priority will be given to critical, scarce and priority funded vacant posts.
Story: NELIE ERASMUS
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