A damning report by the department of public service and administration (DPSA), revealed that the cost of precautionary suspension cases at national government departments stands at R22 million and R61 million in provinces.
The report was presented to Parliament’s portfolio committee on public service and administration (DPSA) on Thursday.
This means that, over the past two quarters, South African taxpayers have forked out R83 million to pay the salaries of government officials who are sitting at home while their disciplinary processes are concluded.
It should also be noted that this amount does not include the associated legal costs. These costs are often inflated by employees who draw out disciplinary cases in court unnecessarily, which means that the amount could be even more considerable than the R83 million currently reported.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will not stand for this blatant abuse of the public purse. As such, we have written to the DPSA Minister, Senzo Mchunu, to request the following interventions:
- The DPSA must ensure that a digitised system is put in place in order to get reliable information from departments in terms of their disciplinary cases. The paper-based system currently in place – just does not work.
- The DPSA must ensure that they develop an audit methodology in order to audit cases and assist in their finalisation.
Furthermore, it was revealed that these suspensions exceed the prescribed time frames of 60 days for completion. This, as a result of the following:
- Departments do not adhere to the collective bargaining agreements and resolutions.
- Disciplinary information is received manually from departments, and managers flout disciplinary codes and processes.
- Departments utilise legal representation as a norm rather than an exception resulting in long delays and additional costs in finalising cases.
The Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, has in each of his budget speeches singled out that we need to deal with the bloated public wage. Yet, we still witness continuous financial abuse in the civil service. There is no doubt that these precautionary suspensions pose a serious risk to the fiscus and to Government’s ability to deliver services.