This week’s mini-budget revealed that President Jacob Zuma’s hotline will receive R16.2-million to add to the R23.5-million already spent on the project, but following Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s warning this week about tough economic times and the need for frugality, is government throwing good money after bad?
The department of performance monitoring and evaluation recorded the allocation as a public-sector administration oversight of the payment of service providers and operational expenditure for the hotline.
Between September 2009 and September 2011, R23.5-million was spent on the service.
“This is largely due to calls to the hotline being toll free,” said departmental spokesperson Harold Maloka. He said that there was no precedent to provide an accurate basis for costing and budgeting and it was not known how many calls to budget for.
“For the first two years the hotline operated on a budget, which, it now becomes clear, was not adequate,” he said. The department was working with the national treasury to ensure a more realistic budget for the hotline.
“Hence the additional R16-million recently voted, mainly for payment of telecoms service providers and for the services of the State Information Technology Agency in the running of the call centre.”
Launched in September 2009, the hotline has been accused of buckling under the pressure of high call volumes.
In November last year, it denied media reports that it could close after the presidency announced that the project would be reviewed.
“Why do we continue to pay for something that yields no results. What is the point?” asked Dion George, the Democratic Alliance’s finance spokesperson, alluding to Gordhan’s assertion that the country was in a tight spot and funds needed to be allocated carefully.
George said there was value in performance monitoring and evaluation, but asked: “Do you need such a massive bureaucracy to do it for you?” He said pressure from the public protector had proved to be the only effective way of counteracting inefficiency and the hotline mechanism did not work. “You can measure away, but what are you measuring and what are you doing with that measurement?”
The department of performance monitoring said it had achieved a 75% resolution rate with regard to complaints in September this year, a marked improvement from 44% in February 2010. Since launching, it had received 111 751 valid queries, of which 84 700 had been attended to and resolved.
The Bhungeni squatter camp in Butterworth in the Eastern Cape was an example of a successful intervention resulting from the hotline, said the department. “A community left homeless by the bulldozing of their shacks can today boast a better settlement.”
Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale has said that the hotline had helped to bring housing issues to his attention, prompting audits.