22/11/2008 18:49 - (SA)
Home Affairs may not fire incompetent staff
By Caiphus Kgosana
HOME Affairs is sitting with hundreds of incompetent senior managers whom it cannot fire because of stringent employment laws.
As a result, the department has been forced to find alternative responsibilities for many managers who are unable to perform their duties and whose skills do not match their job descriptions.
This was revealed by Home Affairs Director-General Mavuso Msimang in Parliament on Friday, when he told Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) that a staggering 70% of the senior managers in the department had failed an internal competency test conducted last year.
Msimang said many senior managers – from director level upwards – who had failed the test dismally had been told to re-apply for their positions.
Msimang, who took over the department last year, said the tests were conducted after they invited the public service and administration (DPSA) department, the National Treasury and the Public Service Commission to help them analyse what was wrong with the department.
He said one of the major problems identified by this multi-pronged task team was the serious lack of capacity among senior managers in the department.
This resulted in a process where senior managers were requested to undertake a competence test, and the results confirmed the shocking truth.
“There was a serious lack of management capacity and issues with management competence,” he said.
Msimang said while the tests had proved conclusively that a majority of senior managers were struggling to perform their duties, remedying the problem was proving even trickier.
Home Affairs asked many of the struggling senior managers to re-apply for their positions, as part of a realignment of the department following recommendations for consultants to be engaged in an intensive three year, R900 million turnaround plan.
He said a number of the managers identified as having weak management skills had been placed in the department in a “holding capacity” while new areas of responsibility were being worked out for them.
Asked if any managers had been dismissed for failing the test, Msimang said the senior management handbook of the DPSA and general labour laws did not allow for employees who had failed competency tests to be dismissed.
“You are not allowed to dismiss a person as a result of their failure in a competency test. You give them an opportunity for training ... so no one’s dismissed as a result,” he said.
Msimang told Parliament they were tightening up controls after the auditor-general gave them a disclaimer in their audit report. The A-G found the department was unable to provide supporting documents for transactions worth millions of rands.
Msimang said the department had identified structural flaws in their revenue management, as well as problems with processes to verify departmental assets and collect cash and wasteful expenditure.
Cash collection offices at Home Affairs are not linked to the government’s Basic Accounting System.
Msimang said a new invoicing system would be rolled out to 60 Home Affairs offices by March 31 next year. The offices collect about 80% of all revenue derived from the various Home Affairs centres.
The department also told Parliament that it had renegotiated its contract with Bosasa, the company that runs the Lindela repatriation centre in Krugersdorp, resulting in a R7 million a year annual saving for the department.
Acting chief financial officer Segaran Naidoo said in terms of the new agreement, the department would be charged at a rate of R95 a day per detainee, limited to 2 500 detainees a day.
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