BuaNews (Tshwane)
Karen Pretorius
26 June 2003
Pretoria — The Interim Management Team (IMT) appointed by President Thabo Mbeki in December last year to probe the administration systems and also look at service delivery in the Eastern Cape presented its report to Cabinet yesterday.
Minister for Public Service and Administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, speaking at a media briefing at Tuynhuys, said turn-around strategies in the departments targeted by the IMT were on track.
'Cabinet is confident that the turn-around of departments is on track and will deliver on improved services as well as governance,' Minister Fraser-Moleketi said.
The IMT focused on the departments of health, education, social development, roads and public works and the provincial treasury.
'What makes this intervention different is the fact that it's designing solutions for implementation and that's the major focus of this particular intervention,' the minister said.
The intervention focused on strengthening back office support to departments, improving internal controls and accountability, improving human resource management, strengthening the leadership and management, fighting corruption and promoting ethics and turn-around strategies to address challenges faced by the departments.
'Contrary to popular perceptions, this particular intervention is about improving the lives of people of the Eastern Cape, first and foremost, and it's not as the tendency is, to view it as a corruption-busting exercise,' she said.
The minister said however that this particular area was receiving pertinent attention by the IMT and the Joint Anti Corruption Task Team, established for that purpose.
She said the IMT was looking at the fast tracking of infrastructure development, ensuring equitable distribution between the regions of the province and proper distribution and deployment of skills, in terms of Resolution 7, the restructuring plan for the Public Service.
The minister said leadership and management in the Eastern Cape would be strengthened by increasing management to one percent of staff in the medium term.
Current projections are that management is at 0,04 percent of staff, the worst in the country, she said.
'Already out of the 244 managers, 224 there has been a profiling for the purposes of doing competency assessment and then dealing with incapable and ill-disciplined managers, we are looking at exiting them from the province.
On the issue of fighting corruption and promoting ethics, the minister said significant progress had been made in dealing with backlogs in disciplinary and criminal cases.
'And then there is a number of forensic audits that are ongoing and where there are problems in the system as well as with specific people, this is being addressed appropriately,' Minister Fraser-Moleketi added.
The minister said the provincial health department was leading the way in terms of the turn-around strategy, while the education department was behind with implementation of the strategy.
She pointed out that the department has had seven managers over the last couple of years.
Director-General of the DPSA, Robinson Ramaite, said the problem in the Eastern Cape was not that of a bloated Public Service, but rather the matching of personnel to areas of critical need.
'We will be putting forward some proposals for a much more radical solution,' Mr Ramaite said.
He expressed the view that by the end of this year when the IMT had completed its work in the province, problems in the Eastern Cape would be much easier to solve.
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