Report of the Portfolio Committee on Public Works on the Budget Vote [Vote 5] and Strategic Plan 2009/10 – 2011/12 of the Department of Public Works and its Entities dated 11 June 2009

The Portfolio Committee on Public Works after receiving a briefing from the Department of Public Works, holding Public Hearings with the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), Independent Development Trust (IDT), Agrément South Africa and the Council for the Built Environment (CBE) reports as follows:

Introduction

Guided by the Rules of Parliament, promulgated in terms of the Constitution, the Portfolio Committee on Public Works plays an oversight role on the Ministry, Department and the Entities. The Committee has to scrutinise the Strategic Plan documents of the Department and its Entities in order to see if the funds requested are aligned to the objectives as stated in the respective strategic plan documents.

1. Department of Public Works

1.1 The Department of Public Works 2009/10 – 2011/12 Strategic Plan is informed by

the following Government strategic documents:

- Current Medium Term Strategic Framework that gets revised annually

- Fifteen year review that outlines the performance of government

- 2009 Development Indicators that are published annually by the Presidency

- Medium Term Budget Policy Statement and the Budget Vote

- Millennium Development Goals, and

- May 2009 Cabinet Lekgotla decisions

1.2 The Department of Public Works strategic goals are to:

- Provide strategic leadership for effective and efficient asset management

- Establish an enabling environment for the creation of both short and sustainable work opportunities for the unemployed

- Contribute to the National goal of Job Creation and Poverty Alleviation

- Transform and regulate the construction and property industries to ensure economic growth and development

- Ensure effective and efficient implementation of project management in the construction and property management environments

- Ensure effective stakeholder management for enhanced implementation of the Department’s mandate

- Ensure effective corporate governance processes and sound resources management, and

- Improved service delivery to meet clients expectations

The Department of Public Works has plans in place to respond to each of the 10 key priorities of government and already has its programme of action that includes projects that will be implemented in the 2009/10 financial year.

The Office of the Director-General in the Department will among other things capacitate the Department with a Monitoring and Evaluation unit, create awareness of the unit and monitor performance of the business units within the department for improved service delivery.

1.3 The following programmes were reported to be the insufficiently funded within the

Department:

- Roll-out of the Government Immovable Asset Management Act (GIAMA) to provinces and municipalities

- Energy efficiency

- Valuation of State properties

- Implementation of Property and Construction charters

- National Infrastructure Maintenance Strategy (NIMS)

- Asset Register

- Condition surveys

- Maintenance backlog

- Roll out Inner City Programme to all nine provinces, and

- Water efficiency

1.4 Budget:

The Department of Public Works received an allocation of R 5.29 billion for the 2009/10 MTEF from which the following allocations have been done per entity: Agrément South Africa: R 8.55 million, Council for the Built Environment: R 24.15 million and Construction Industry Development Board: R 59.26 million. The department reported that it expects a total of R 7.37 billion on conditional grants over the MTEF and assured the Committee that systems are in place to ensure effective monitoring and management of the conditional grants as captured in the Division of Revenue Act (DORA).

2. Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB):

2.1 The Construction Industry Development Board Strategic Objectives are to:

- Capacitate the organisation in terms of building human resources capacity, establishment of the last Construction Contact Centre/s and improving contractor development

- Improve value-add at service delivery, especially at the Construction Contact Centres

- Increase the capacity of the research and development agenda

- Start with phase II of the contractor register, and

- Development of procurement processes

The CIDB outlined its key focus areas for the 2009/10 financial year and indicated in section 6 of their business plan how they wish to measure their output targets.

CIDB receives its income from the Government allocation, registers of contractors and also from interest on the funds they have in their bank account.

3. Independent Development Trust (IDT):

3.1 The Strategic objectives of the IDT are to:

- Attain sustainable livelihoods through people centred development interventions

- Pioneer innovative development solutions

- Ensure excellence in service delivery

3.2 Budget:

- The total budget increase is conservative and is in line with approved budget guidelines

- Allocations can be afforded in the MTEF period

- Limited capacity exist to significantly impact on revenue generating capacity in the short term

- The IDT ensures effective management of their initiated projects in order for them to attain cost efficiency of projects

4. Agrément South Africa:

4.1 Vision 2015 of the Agrément South Africa:

- Innovative, modern and better technologies will be widely used in South Africa

- Agrément will be highly visible and relevant to the construction industry in South Africa

- Substandard innovative construction products will be prevented from entering the market

- The risk involved in the use of untested innovative products will be ameliorated

- The agency will be highly transformed and will represent the demographic profile of the country, and

- The housing provision challenge will be mostly addressed using innovative construction systems

The Agrément South Africa anticipates being regulated under an Act of Parliament. The budget allocated to the entity for the 2009/10 financial year indicates that they will be spending 56% of their income on human capital costs,15% on technical assessments and operation, 8% on rental, It is also noted that the rental paid is below the market value, as the CSIR is not charging them market related amounts. Further 21% will be spent on finance, human resources and administration.

5. Council for the Built Environment (CBE):

5.1 The CBE strategic objectives are to:

- Improve stakeholder relations and create partnerships to improve service delivery

- Intervene in improving the performance of the skills delivery pipeline

- Ensure the alignment of the activities of the CBE and the Built Environment professional councils with national imperatives and initiatives

- Ensure an effective and efficient public protection regime

- Transform and consolidate the regulatory, institutional and structural framework regulating the functioning of the CBE and the professional councils

The CBE is concerned about inadequate funding and the councils that are unable to deal with their mandates sufficiently.

6. Committee Observations:

The Committee acknowledged that the engagements were limited by time constraints. The Committee also acknowledged that many of the members of the committee had been recently appointed to the Portfolio Committee on Public Works and would need further engagements to understand the mandates of the Department and its entities.

7. Conclusion:

The Committee agreed that it would invite the entities individually to appear before the Committee again. The Committee also concluded that, it would, in their next meetings with the entities, request them to indicate deadlines for achieving their objectives as presented before the portfolio committee.

Report to be considered