The African National Congress (ANC) government is undermining Parliament through its inability to respond to 177 written questions posed by the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) during 2006, DA chief whip Douglas Gibson said on Tuesday.
In a statement, Gibson, who is acting leader of the party while Tony Leon is abroad, said: ”This is yet again another indication of the ANC government’s complete unwillingness to be held accountable and to treat Parliament with the respect it deserves.”
Gibson said four departments were responsible for 97 of the outstanding replies. They are: health at 38; provincial and local government at 28; justice and constitutional development at 21; and correctional services at 10.
The departments of justice and constitutional development, provincial and local government and correctional services are also the worst offenders when it comes to replying to written questions promptly, he charged.
The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development had replies dating back to February 10, the Department of Correctional Services to 10 March and the Department of Provincial and Local Government to March 17.
Many of the written questions that remained unanswered sought replies on a range of important issues — for example: whether the president would remove the minister of health from her position in light of her poor performance in respect of the public health service; whether the minister of justice and constitutional development could indicate if any presidential pardons had been granted in the last two years and if persons released as a result had subsequently re-offended; and whether the resolution passed by Parliament on the recent situation in Middle East accorded with government policy towards Israel.
Gibson said it is ”completely unacceptable that government departments merely receive a warning that all outstanding replies have to be submitted before Parliament closes while absolutely no disciplinary action is taken against them when they fail to do so”.
The fact that the rules of Parliament contain no effective provisions to ensure written questions are replied to means that ministers and their government departments ”continuously get away with making a mockery of one of the very mechanisms that is meant to ensure oversight over them and to hold them accountable for their actions and failures”, argued Gibson.
”Parliament urgently needs to examine and re-evaluate the current parliamentary question system so that mechanisms can be put in place to compel ministers and their departments to meet their parliamentary obligations in the future.” — I-Net Bridge