Stats SA might not have the numbers to get crunching

Stats SA continues to lose key technical staff at a rate faster than it is able to replace them, which could hamper the organisation’s ability to do its work, statistician-general Risenga Maluleke warns.

The vacancy rate at the country’s national statistical service has worsened since March. It now stands at 15%. According to Stats SA’s annual report for 2017/2018, by the financial year-end in March the vacancy rate was 13.9%.

“In the last 12 months alone we have lost more than 170 staff members, some of them in critical positions,” Maluleke told Business Times on Tuesday after the release of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the third quarter of 2018. The survey found that SA’s unemployment rate had widened to 27.5% from 27.2% previously.

Vacancies are for key posts such as those held by methodologists and technical staff in population and social statistics, and economics.

“If we don’t get the funding, certainly there are serious challenges. It means that not only are our population and social statistics going to be affected, but our economic statistics like our pricing statistics. We are not going to be able to estimate the consumer price index better because the basket to which we must refer to will not be dependable,” Maluleke said.

Stats SA is caught in a bind. In 2016, a moratorium was placed on hiring after the National Treasury implemented belt-tightening measures due to weaker revenue. It has not been lifted.

In May last year, the Treasury cut the organisation’s budget by 13%. By the time former statistician-general Pali Lehohla stepped down later that year after nearly two decades, 230 critical posts were empty.

Maluleke declined to disclose how much money was required but said it was “considerable enough”.

As the result of funding shortages, Stats SA now has an “overexpenditure on compensation of employees”, Maluleke said. “We’re talking about warm bodies, people who are there, that we don’t have enough money to pay them.”

Mlungisi Mtshali, spokesperson for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the minister in the presidency for planning, monitoring and evaluation, said Dlamini-Zuma was concerned about funding constraints at Stats SA and had raised the matter in her budget vote in May.

Shifting to digital

“We are engaging with the cabinet through the minister’s cabinet colleagues. That’s all we can say at the moment. I think it would be fair to give the minister of finance some time to apply his mind to the request that we’ve made to Treasury.”

At an operations level, Stats SA is shifting to digital methods to reduce the costs of its systems for production and collection of data, which are expensive. This will, however, require a capital injection.

The process involves operations moving from paper-based interviews to computerassisted personal interviews. “Once that is done we expect to see windfalls and the benefits of not having to spend a lot of resources going forward,” said Maluleke.

“But it’s not a matter you address overnight. What we are dealing with overnight is staff members are resigning, they are getting better jobs elsewhere — the banks, investment sector is taking them. We are also losing staff members that are going on retirement.”

In the last 12 months alone we have lost more than 170 staff members, some of them in critical positions. If we don’t get the funding, certainly there are serious challenges

Risenga Maluleke Statistician-general