Labour department DG Jimmy Manyi has yet to accede to Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana's instruction to apologise for attempting to inflate the department's budget by R1-billion.

Following Tuesday's labour portfolio committee meeting, Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament (MP) Ian Ollis said that Manyi's "refusal" to publicly apologise before Parliament should be met by action from the minister.

During last week's debate in the National Assembly on the labour budget vote, Ollis revealed that Manyi had attempted to inflate the budget to offer a post facto legitimate reason for requesting the additional funding in the first place.

A confidential email showed that Manyi explicitly ordered his senior officials to inflate the budget to legitimise a request for an additional R1-billion in government funds, Ollis said.

Mdladlana responded that Manyi's behaviour was an embarrassment to the department and that Manyi would have to appear before the committee to apologise.

If he failed to do so, he would have to face the consequences of that.

"Well, Manyi has failed to apologise for his behaviour," Ollis said on Tuesday.

"He appeared before the committee this morning, but failed to say anything to that effect and instead hid behind the flimsy argument made by the chair of the portfolio committee Lumka Yengeni, that the commet by Mdladlana - and therefore his apology - was not on the agenda of the labour committee.

"This can only mean that he now has to face consequences for his behaviour," Ollis said.

"Once again the ANC is hiding behind obfuscation to avoid dealing with the real issue - Manyi tried to inflate the budget of the [department] to legitimise his own request for additional funding.

"At a time when all government departments need to cut down on expenses, Manyi has purposefully gone in the opposite direction to increase the fiscal burden.

"The DA is calling on the minister to take the requisite action as promised," Ollis said.