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The Department of Labour (DoL) has posted a clean audit opinion for the second year in the running, building on the work in progress to consolidate the financial management systems in the department, Director-General Nkosinathi Nhleko told the Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Labour today (October 9).
 
Nhleko together with the top brass of the department were presenting the department’s 2011/2012 annual report for the period ending 31 March 2012 in Parliament today (October 9). Nhleko attributed the positive audit report by the Auditor General (AG) to the successful tackling of matters that were raised by the Auditor General.
 
Some of these related to financial management, accountability and supply management processes amongst others.
 
The department last year announced that it had for the period ((2010/2011) delivered a clean audit following six successive years of successive qualified audits.
 
In the period under review the Department of Labour was allocated R2,17-billion and managed to spend R2,007-billion.
 
Nhleko told Portfolio Committee members that the department had in the year under review managed to breach the 8% mark vacancy rate, reducing it to 7,2%. Going forward Nhleko committed the department in particular to filling key strategic positions.
“At the end of the year, the next review will tell another different positive story,” he said.
In the year under focus DoL’s focus has been on labour law amendments (Basic Conditions of Employment Bill, the Labour Relations Bill, and Employment Equity Bill; including the introduction of the new Public Employment Services Bill); rebuilding the Public Employment Services; implementation of Decent Work Country Programme; Strengthening of Department of Labour inspectorate; reduce inequality and discrimination in the labour market through effective compliance monitoring and enforcement of the Employment Equity Act
 
“The focus going forward is to shift to service delivery points. We want to make labour centres in all provinces accessible. The Inspection and Enforcement Services (IES) branch of the department will also be beefed-up as we move towards specialisation. We are also focused on developing the PES and position it to be more relevant in job creation efforts,” Nheko said.Nhleko told the Portfolio Committee that the department’s exit and services transfer plan from the DoL/Siemens public private partnership (PPP) was currently being implemented. He told the committee that DoL had recently approved a five-year information communication and technology (ICT) strategy to build its own capacity.
The 10-year DoL/Siemens public private partnership worth more than R1,2-billion for provision of information and communication technology services ends in November 2012.
 “If we make significant progress in these areas, we are certain to register more milestones in our work,” Nhleko said.