POPCRU
SUBMISSION TO THE DCS PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON CORRECTIONAL SERVICES IN RESPONSE
TO THE ANNUAL REPORT OF 2006/2007. DELIVERED BY
HIS EXCELLENCY CDE ABBEY WITBOOI: POPCRU GENERAL SECRETARY ON 31 OCTOBER 2007
IN PARLIAMENT OF THE
INTRODUCTION
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (
POPCRU) would like to appreciate the fact that the Portfolio Committee
on Correctional Services has extended the invitation to one of the critical
role players in the Criminal Justice Cluster. It is our principled view that
the DCS should discharge its constitutional responsibilities in cooperation and
in conjunction with all stakeholders operating in this area of governance. As a
matter of fact, we shall always have a policy-making opinion on how should the
Department be properly managed, effectively and efficiently.
Honourable Members, first and foremost,
please allow me, on behalf of POPCRU, to make mention of the fact that the
Department has a critical role to play in service delivery to the SA citizenry.
We expect the Department to ensure that Correctional Centres is indeed, a
rehabilitation haven where offenders’ criminal behaviour
is transformed for the better and that they do not even think of escaping from
lawful custody. In order for this responsibility to be professionally and
effectively executed, the Department should make provision for an on-going
multi-disciplinary training mechanism for Correctional Officials which will
tackle capacity building.
CORRUPTION
IN THE DEPARTMENT
We would like to implore the Department to institute an
independent research on the causes of corruption among some of its employees
and what are the factors contributing to corruptible practices for it is our
concern that some employees of DCS have been found to be corruptible. It is our
view that this corrupt behavior should be thoroughly investigated and
measures/mechanisms put into place to deal with this problem. We are of the
view that causes of this scourge are arguably inherent and traceable from the
structural set-up of the system. Simply put, the causes of corruption are as a
result of systemic problems.
We should also quickly mention the fact that the criticism
should not be generalized because it is not all members that are involved in
corrupt practices. The Department therefore, has a greater responsibility to
set this record into perspective that the media should refrain from this
blanket criticism of members as corrupt.
POLICY
DEVELOPMENT
The process of policy development should be democratized in
all respects in that all stakeholders are involved in such processes. We are of
the view that the Department should not be unilaterally and arbitrarily managed
as if there were no other role players. We are not impressed with the manner in
which the Department does its consultation with us for we are an essential
player in the governance of Correctional Services. POPCRU would like to play a
more positive co-management role for this is our Department and we have a umbilical relationship with DCS. This role could be made more easier through the platform that we both have created,
i.e. the
ADMINISTRATION
The critically important seven (7) key areas of the DCS need
a huge number of human resource personnel and therefore, we hereby call upon
the Department to intensify the recruitment drive of quality personnel. In the
same vein, the Department should introduce rigorous extra-curricular
capacity-building courses in order to equip its personnel with hands-on
expertise on a wide range of skills.
Mention should also be made that there is a huge number of
personnel concentrated at DCS HEAD QUARTERS. We are of the view that these
officials should be redeployed to correctional facilities in all management
areas across the country in order to beef up personnel capacity in the
provision of genuine service delivery to the SA population. The Social
Reintegration Programme of the Department should be intensified for it is imperative
in solving the overcrowding crisis facing our correctional centres today.
Furthermore, we believe that this programme can play an important role in
curbing the scourge of
crime because those released from prison would find favourable
conditions to create and get job opportunities thus defeating the phenomenon
called RECIDIVISM.
AUDIT
COMMITTEE
As reflected in the Annual Report of the DCS, ‘the internal
controls of the Department are not effective in all respects’, we therefore
call upon the Department’s Management to introduce measures that will address
these deficiencies in the controls relating to asset management, medical aid
contributions, staff receivables and all other control activities listed in the
Report of the Auditor-General.
REPORT OF
THE ACCOUNTING OFFICER
We are of the view that there wouldn’t be a recurrence of
events wherein the Accounting Officer disappears when expected to report to the
Executive Authority and Parliament. As indicated in this report above,
reiteration is made to the Department to make all processes of policy
development transparent and democratic. Without any intention of repetition, we
humbly but firmly submit that POPCRU is a significant role player in the
Department and therefore their contribution in policy formulation is of crucial
importance. Due to the fact that the Department is a state organ performing a
public service function, we submit that its financial statements be made
accessible to the public for thorough open scrutiny.
UTILIZATION
OF CONSULTANTS
POPCRU has seriously been disturbed by the Department’s
hiring of private consultants to perform a variety of important government
tasks. We think the Portfolio Committee should know that most of these
consultants are former employees of the Department who were disgruntled with
the new democratic dispensation resulting in the de-militarization
of the then Department of Prisons in 1997. POPCRU therefore, regards their
expertise consulting work with suspicion and in actual fact; we demand an immediate
discontinuation of this practice which has milked hundreds of millions from the
Department’s coffers. We submit that the Department should instead train its
capable personnel in the execution of these duties that have been reservedly
privatized for the enrichment of Old Order private consultants. We view this
practice as white collar corruption of the highest degree.
EMPLOYMENT
VACANCIES
We implore the Department to adhere to the spirit and letter
of our collective agreements that all vacancies should be filled in terms of
target dates. We further submit that this process be expedited as it has a
direct impact on service delivery by management. SA has a plethora of high
caliber human capital who possess charisma, competency
and professional determination to execute duties.
LABOUR
RELATIONS
We would like to make an appeal to DCS not to use its Labour Relations Division as Union Basher. This appeal is
clearly informed by the fact that the DCS Labour
Relations Division has been responsible for ill-advising Senior Management on
various instances. For instance, this component grossly misled and ill-advised
its top management on en-masse
dismissals of employees in 2004 which were later declared grossly unprocedural and unfair resulting in all the dismissed
reinstated in toto.
We submit that this Labour Relations Division should
play a pivotal role in the harmonization of relations between DCS and the Trade
Union Movement. This should be done in accordance with the spirit and letter of
the RBO Philosophy.
SKILLS
DEVELOPMENT
POPCRU would further submit that the Department should
adhere to the dictates of the Skills Development Act in implementing the skilling measures of its employees. As highlighted earlier
on, the radical implementation of skills development could assist in the
empowerment of personnel for effective and efficient execution of duties as
aptly asserted by the fields of Industrial Psychology and Industrial Sociology
that an empowered and capacitated workforce will always add tangible value in
the organization.
PERFORMANCE
REWARDS
In principle, POPCRU has acknowledged the introduction of
the Department’s appraisal system which we think should be improved on a
continuous basis due to its systemic structural challenges. For instance, we have
consistently argued that the Moderating Committees should not be accorded ultra-vires powers
to chop and change marks given by supervisors who work directly with these
examined co-employees. We further submit that Labour
should be accorded a more active role in the entire process of performance
appraisal. It should also be mentioned that the system’s easily manipulable nature be thoroughly scrutinized in order to
eliminate systemic deficiencies of the performance system.
INJURY ON
DUTY
The Department should improve its handling of ‘injury on
duty’ incidents as we have been engaging them on numerous such cases. We are of
the view that there should be some added sense of urgency in tackling such
cases. In tandem with this, we submit that the Department should exercise some
urgency in handling pension related matters which we think have not been
expeditiously attended to. As a result of the laxness and conspicuous absence
of urgency, affected individuals suffer serious negative repercussions.
LEAVE
UTILIZATION
As we all know, leave is a workers’ right and important
benefit clearly enshrined in and protected by the Basic Conditions of
Employment Act (BCEA). Employees should therefore not denied
this right or penalized in one way or the other for exercising it. Equally, we
submit that the Department should make provision of a mechanism to manage the
utilization of leave effectively and efficiently without impacting negatively
on the Department’s service delivery objectives.
HIV/AIDS
AND HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAMMES
The Department should add more verve in the implementation
of a more visible plan on HIV/AIDS and other health issues. The scourge of
HIV/AIDS is one of the daunting challenges facing the country in the current
conjuncture and we need to tackle it head-on. We submit that the Department was
ill-advised on the issue of Offender ARV ROLL-OUT which ended with the
Department loosing the LITIGATION. We further submit that the Department should
engage in more health promotion programmes for both
members and offenders due to the challenges posed by working conditions in our
correctional facilities.
EMPLOYMENT
EQUITY
We submit that DCS should adhere to agreed upon targets and
time frames. Our view is that the Department has been poor in its implementation
of equity policies. For instance, we submit that there are still areas whose
composition is worryingly lily white and predominantly male. These areas are
Information Technology, Logistics and Finance. We demand total transformation
and employment equity in these areas. We also submit that the argument of the
Department that there is scarcity of qualified women is economic with the
truth. We call upon the Department to intensify its recruitment campaign and
introduce attractive packages that will lure the cream of the crop among women.
EXPENDITURE
The Department is always on the news for wrong reasons which
are predominantly about reckless and precarious expenditure. Recently, the
Department became a laughing stock due to the failure to account for hundreds
of millions of rands pertaining to the construction
of new prisons. The Department has a constitutional responsibility to adhere to
the stipulations of the Public Finance Management Act and should avoid both
over-expenditure and under-expenditure.