The Democratic Alliance would like to applaud the former Statistician-General, Dr Pali Lehohla, for the praiseworthy job he has done over the years at Statistics South Africa.
We also wish him the best in his new endeavours.
Furthermore, we would like to welcome Mr Risenga Maluleke, the new Statistician-General, and wish him success in his high posting to this very important institution.
Stats SA has worked incredibly hard over many years to earn local and international respect and recognition as a reputable institution. This reputation must be jealously guarded by all of us.
As such, Stats SA must always be free from any political interference in the production and dissemination of official statistics.
While we welcome the commitment of Mr Maluleke and his team to collective leadership responsibility to enhance high quality performance of the institution, we would like to caution that this should not stand in the way of individual accountability where this is necessary.
The department has a budget of R2.2 billion for 2018/19, increasing to R3.3 billion by 2020/21. While this may appear to be significant, the department has some serious budget constraints that have serious negative consequences on staffing and staff morale.
During the 2017/18 financial year, more than 104 staff members left Stats SA, to make a total of 170 vacancies in the department – a vacancy rate of 13.8%.
The department had a staff complement of 1 352 in 2017/18 compared to 1 408 staff members in 2016/17, a significant decrease in funded posts.
At the same time, what the institution has tagged as abuse of sick-leave continues to plague the department. This has a serious negative impact on performance. The committee noted with deep concern that 13 423 days were lost to sick-leave at a cost of R35.7 million during the 2016/17 financial year. The matter is being investigated to establish the real causes and deal with them expeditiously.
The deep concern for Stats-SA is that staff members who leave the department are mostly specialists and technically skilled people who should be retained. An adequate budget for Compensation of Employees should remedy this problem.
However, due to inadequate budget, the department has not been able to fill any vacancies since 2016.
In fact, the projected overspending on compensation of employees before virements is expected to be R146 million for 2018/19, R181 million in 2019/20 and R194million in 2020/21.
The DA recognises that economic times are tough and that there should be serious belt-tightening, but we would like to caution that the government should not be penny wise and pound foolish in the case of Stats SA.
A major risk to the department is that budget cuts can lead to a decline in the quality of performance due to staff shortages.
Another significant risk concerns Census 2021.
The Census 2021 Budget has been estimated at R3.3 billion. If this cannot be provided, the department will have to revert to costly old mode collection of statistics. This will impact the timelines for the release of the numbers. It furthermore cost the country R7 billion to get the task completed if the department was forced to revert to old statistic collection modes.
For this reason, the Portfolio Committee has recommended that National Treasury, working with the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation on the budget prioritisation framework, should ensure that Stats SA is provided with adequate funds to conduct the Census.
The results of the Management Performance Assessment Tool 2017, finalised in March 2017 provide but one justification to pay special attention to the funding of Stats SA
Stats SA scored highest in a comparison of three key departments: The Presidency, the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) and Stats SA in the key performance areas of Strategic Management, Governance and Accountability, Human Resource Management and Financial Management.
Accurate, credible data enhances precise planning and costing, and reduces wastage of resources.
For this reason alone, it is crucial that we provide Stats SA with the resources it needs to continue to provide high quality services to our people.