COST-CUTTING MEASURES AT PARLIAMENT
3 June 2015
The Office of the ANC Chief Whip welcomes the concrete and tangible steps that have been announced by Parliament’s Presiding Officers to reduce the cost of conducting the business and activities of the institution.
The cost-cutting measures were announced by the Presiding Officers during the introduction and subsequent debate of Parliament’s budget vote for the 2015/2016 financial year.
In terms of the cost-containment measures, Parliament will from now on abandon certain practices that have in previous instances resulted in wasteful spending of public money.
The measures, among others, include:
- Reducing the catering budgets for portfolio committee meetings, which have recently become too excessive and wasteful
- Introducing video-conferencing for oversight meetings with departmental officials, which will cut-down the spending associated with traveling between Cape Town and Pretoria wherein officials are forced to sometimes unnecessarily book to hotels and rent cars
- Reporting MPs who fail to show-up for already paid-for oversight trips, which has become a regular practice that results in wasteful expenditure, to their party Chief Whips for corrective action to be taken
- Reducing Parliament’s printing costs alone by R15 million this year through the optimal use of Information Communication Technology.
As the majority party in Parliament we welcome these cost-cutting measures because they are in line with the call that has been consistently made by the Finance Minister that publicly-funded institutions must find creating ways to do more with less in the face of a challenging economic climate.
We commend the Presiding Officers for showing leadership and demonstrating a political will to eliminate any form of wasteful and fruitless expenditure by the national legislature.
These cost-cutting measures illustrate firm commitment to eradicating wasteful and reckless expenditure in the public sector – particularly at the level of Parliament, which as an oversight institution is constitutionally mandated to ensure that public funds are spend in a proper and efficient manner.
As the ANC, we will ensure that our members who have been deployed as
committee chairpersons do see to it that this measures are indeed implemented expeditiously and adhered to by all our deployees in Parliament.
Statement issued by the Office of the ANC Chief Whip, June 3 2015
