Late payment undermines state administration

Outsourcing the management of ill-health within the public service, failure to pay service providers promptly and legal costs incurred by departments appealing arbitration settlements awarded to suppliers and employees are undermining state administration. This emerged in Tuesday’s briefing by the Public Service Commission (PSC) to the parliamentary appropriation committee as part of the hearings on the medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS). The commission has evaluated 11 of the more than 35 national departments and identified several areas of concern, even if all but energy and labour consistently improved on matching spending with performance over the past three years. “Management of ill-health in the public service is outsourced to companies that do not even have health professionals,” said PSC commissioner for monitoring and evaluation, Phumelele Nzimande, who added that some of the companies appeared to have been “created to make money”.

Medical assessment is required for medical boarding and long-term sick leave. Nzimande said ill public servants could go to excellently run government health facilities like Tshwane’s Steve Biko Academic Hospital or the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Hospital in eThekwini. “Why then do you contract another company outside the public service to check if public servants are healthy enough to work?” she asked. Meanwhile, PSC acting chairman Richard Sizani described as “tragic” the failure by departments to pay service providers within 30 days, as per the National Treasury regulation introduced in 2009. However, exact statistics on non-payment were not yet available, as the National Treasury and the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation were “still collecting information on how many invoices were not paid”. Sizani said often service providers were forced to go to arbitration and then court to obtain orders for payment, but these orders were ignored until there were contempt of court proceedings. This was why some courts had now started ordering officials to pay from their own pockets.

“There are no consequences, heads of departments continue to refuse to deal with this. As a result, they go scot-free… Heads of departments still get bonuses, even if businesses are not paid,” Sizani said. “Small and medium businesses, who are recognised as a key group in creating jobs in the country, are unable to create those jobs and are having their businesses closed because they are operating on overdrafts... If they are not paid by government within a reasonable time, they are killed by the overdrafts.” The same pattern applied to arbitration settlements to employees, including rulings by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), which are first ignored and, when this is taken to court, appealed. MPs of the appropriation committee also raised questions over the long-term suspensions of civil servants on disciplinary charges – the process is supposed to take no more than 90 days, according to the law and regulations – after it emerged one KZN official had been suspended for 12 years, and another official, whose department or province was not disclosed, for four years.

“We can’t say as a country we don’t have money when we have people sitting at home getting paid. For a department to pay for four years and not worry – this is a waste of resources. I am worried,” said ANC MP Sheila Shope-Sithole. DA MP Malcolm Figg agreed, saying: “It’s scary to think what you’d see in other departments”.