Staff cash crunch
Tension between Home Affairs and Treasury over budgets
THE government says it lacks the funds required to allow the Department of Home Affairs to hire more officials and to man the proposed border management authority.
The authority was approved by the cabinet in 2016 and the Border Management Authority Bill, which will govern its implementation, is currently serving before parliament.
The authority is expected to be in operation by 2018.
The Treasury set the department’s expenditure ceiling on employee compensation at R3.146-billion in the 2016-17 financial year, R3.233-billion in 2017-18 and R3.328billion in fiscal year 2018-19.
The establishment of the authority has created tension between the department and the Treasury.
Home affairs wants the authority to oversee all border-related functions, including customs revenue collection while the Treasury, which is currently performing this function through the South African Revenue Service (SARS), wants to keep it.
Members of the home affairs portfolio committee implied on Tuesday that the department was being starved of money because of the tussle.
“There is now no budget for it [the authority] as the Treasury is not allocating funds for it,” said committee chairman Lemias Mashile. The department wanted the authority to “take its infant steps” on April 1, “but we don’t have the allocation”.
“As there is no allocation, it looks like the Treasury is preparing itself for yet another fight,” said Mashile.
Treasury chief director for public finance Gillian Wilson told the committee with regard to home affairs’ personnel and employee budget needs, the department had a shortfall of R141-million in 2017-18 and R319-million in 2018-19.
“In order to remain within the ceiling, the Treasury advised the department not to fill positions as they become vacant from 2016-17, because doing so would increase the shortfall in the outer [period],” said Wilson.
The Treasury would continue to discuss the matter with home affairs and return to the committee with an update on how the problem is to be resolved, Wilson said.
This would involve seeking alternative means to address the department’s funding pressures, she said.
“The [vacancies] move resulted in the department being unable to fill critical positions and as a result the action impacted negatively on service delivery. A case in point is capacity at OR Tambo International Airport. As a result additional funding has been allocated; R17million in each year in 2017-18 and 2018-19,” she said.
The issues “that have curbed the appointment of officials to the office of home affairs” had to be dealt with, Mashile said.
“They must not apply just [a] technical system but be aware of the implications of their decisions on each department,” Mashile said. — BDLive