CONTAIN COSTS TO OFFER FREE HIGHER EDUCATION
On 19 December 2013, Schalk Human, Acting Accountant-General at the National Treasury issued instruction 01 of 2013/2014. This document prescribed cost containment measures. In it he urges accounting officers and of accounting authorities in public entities to give full effect to sections 38(1)(b), 38(1)(c)(iii) and 51(b)(iii) of the Public Finance Management Act of 1999.
This instruction should have come seven years earlier. To fund free tertiary level education Treasury must now update that instruction to achieve even greater stringency. Meanwhile, COPE will ask President Zuma whether his government had fully backed the Minister of Finance and National Treasury on cost containment and whether it had initiated any rigorous internal processes to implement, enforce and report on those measures.
The Freedom Charter promised that the doors of learning shall be opened to all. COPE fully commits to that ideal. Government is now on terms to ensure that what it does is not too little, too late. Students will have none of that!
Last Friday, the Cape Argus stunningly surrendered the writing of its editorial to a team from the protesting youth. It was a stroke of inspired genius. In similar manner, government should invite students of every university in the country to examine public finances, the PFMA and Treasury Notices and thereafter to participate in the budget making process. The Minister must make the budget with them.
As they participate in that process they will set twitter alight as they connect and interact with one another. That will be democracy at work.
Minister Nzimande conceded on TV that government should be bold. He is right. Government must now very boldly accede to free tertiary education at once.
To ensure that there is funding for free higher education government must implement the following measures at once -
1. axe all deputy ministers and shut down their offices and halve the number of ministers;
2. end bail outs for SOE’s;
3. curtail golden handshakes;
4. punish futile, fruitless and unauthorised expenditure very severely;
5. contract the bureaucracy significantly;
6. halt all vanity projects;
7. begin an active reduction of the national debt by drastically cutting consumption side expenditure to reduce the escalating cost of servicing that debt;
8. stoke up the engines of the economy.
Government must end the frenzied feeding at the trough for politicians. Nkandla must serve as the watershed.
In 2013/2014, irregular expenditure by government totalled a staggering R62,7 billion. A further R2,6 billion was unauthorized expenditure. The Auditor General fingered the departments of education, health and public works as the worst offenders. Together, these three departments accounted for R16.9 billion of the irregular expenditure.
COPE urges government to announce a new plan, with necessary strings attached, for free higher education. The devil must remain in the detail.
Issued by Dennis Bloem, COPE Spokesperson, 28 October 2015
