Issued by: SA Communication Service
STATEMENT BY DR ZOLA SKWEIYA, MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION ON INITIATIVES TO PROMOTE A MORE REPRESENTATIVE PUBLIC SERVICE.
Great strides have been made in ensuring that the public service becomes representative of the South African community. It is a known fact that until recently, black people, particularly women were systematically excluded from all influential positions in the public service. The targets set out in the White Paper on the Transformation of the public service, are indeed realistic, judging by the progress made thus far.
Given the urgency and the seriousness this issue has received since the advent of Government of National Unit, the advertising of + - 11000 posts in the "jobs for South Africa" recruitment drive was just one short term initiative my Department embarked on specifically to promote representativeness.
The former Office of the Public Service Commission co-ordinated the advertising of these posts while Departments and Provinces were responsible for filling their respective vacancies. It has subsequently been found that some of the + - 11000 vacancies were not available for filling. There were actually 9 629 vacancies that should have been advertised.
My Ministry and the former Office of the Public Service Commission has been constantly monitoring the situation to ensure that representativeness is being achieved. However, due to the processes of rationalisation and restructuring of the public service, problems and delays have been experienced in filling the vacancies. Furthermore, the right-sizing and down-sizing of the public service also had an impact on the filling of these vacancies.
According to the survey conducted by my Department on 30 May 1996, a total of 2311 (24.0%) posts were reported to have been filled by means of transfer/promotion/appointment of candidates under this exercise. The level of representativeness has been achieved by the advancement of 1096 (47.4%) Africans, 151 (6.5%) Indians/Asians, and 268 (11.6%) Coloureds. Eight disabled people were appointed.
Of the vacancies that have been filled, 1209 (52.3% candidates were recruited fro outside the public service, 258 serving officials were transferred and 854 were promoted. This clearly indicates that although the process of the filling of vacancies under this exercise was slow, progress has been made in making the public service more accessible. Furthermore, 1026 (44.4%) women have been recruited as compared to 1285 (55.6%) males, which indicates that gender representativeness is also being addressed.
So far, 4 222 (43,8%) vacancies under this exercise were abolished due to rationalisation. Other vacancies were redefined and thus, not considered part of the "+/- 11000 posts" any longer. This has resulted in departments/administrations filling these vacancies in the normal procedure and disregarding the provisions set out in the Public Service Commission Circular No 22 and 22A of 1994.
Thus, because of the aforementioned problems experienced with the filling of these posts and the length of time the project has been dragging, my Ministry has decided to discontinue this project. However, since there are 3307 vacancies of the "Jobs for South Africa" initiative that are yet to be filled, respective departments and provincial administrations will take the responsibility and the accompanying accountability in this regard. Any queries and enquiries concerning the "Jobs for South Africa (+/- 11 000 posts)" project will, therefore, have to be directed to respective departments/administrations.