Salomon Hoogenraad-Vermaak, chief director of the Public Administration Ethics, Integrity, and Disciplinary Technical Assistance Unit (TAU), said that by the end of March, the department had identified 250 long-standing cases in national departments.
The Public Service and Administration Department has reported a 53% decrease in long-overdue disciplinary case backlogs, attributed to a pilot project launched late last year.
At the ethics week launch in Pretoria, Salomon Hoogenraad-Vermaak, chief director of the Public Administration Ethics, Integrity, and Disciplinary Technical Assistance Unit (TAU), said that by the end of March, the department had identified 250 long-standing cases in national departments.
“When we were done, the two people allocated with the work uplifted 133 cases, which is 53% resolution rate. For provinces we identified 172 cases that they resolved and they could manage to resolve 40% of their cases,” Hoogenraad-Vermaak said.
He also said based on what they introduced from the beginning of the 2024-25 financial year on case backlogs, there was a definite decrease in registered disciplinary cases on Persal, a payroll database for civil servants.
“We also found that the suspensions decreased considerably,” Hoogenraad-Vermaak said.
There were 402 employees that were suspended by national departments at the end of March and the number dropped to 286 at the end of July.
“If you look at provincial departments they had 258 employees suspended in March and at the end of July it dropped to 183. This is testimony to departments that implement the directives in discipline management.”
Hoogenraad-Vermaak said with the suspension coming down, the related costs had also come down during the same period.
“Usually we saw in a quarter the cost of suspension will be between R20 million and R25m growing because it is cumulative. We could now see from March to July it only increased by R5m, which really shows there is a reduction in cases.”
He also said with long-overdue suspensions appearing on Persal, they found 54 employees currently suspended for longer than a year and the longest was for one person suspended for five years.
He said they had found that out of 160 departments, four national departments and nine provincial departments did not conduct lifestyle audits by the end of July.
“We find that 147 of the complaints referred 192 senior management service employees for investigation and they are busy with the investigation to provide quarterly reports to the unit about what the investigation is yielding.”
Public and Service and Administration Minister Mzamo Buthelezi said the referral of employees for investigation from 147 out of 160 departments that conducted lifestyle audits as at end of January 2024 was an improvement compared to the 137 last year.
“I wish to commend the dedication of departmental investigators to ensure lifestyle audits were conducted in their departments,” Buthelezi said.
Cape Times
