Pretoria: The state of the country’s economy and the steps that need to be taken to ensure that government creates the necessary jobs and provides opportunities for the people, are among the critical reports to be presented to the Cabinet Lekgotla.

The last Cabinet Lekgotla, for the current administration before the elections, got underway today at Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House in Pretoria. The meeting will, among other things, assess the current administration and the progress made to date.

Speaking shortly before the start of meeting, Minister in the Presidency for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, Collins Chabane, told reporters that they will be looking at a draft document on the state of all the administration and how far government has come during this term.

“We made a lot of changes in 2009 [under] the new administration… New departments were created, [while] others have split… We are giving an assessment of that exercise [to look at] how we performed, what was the experience, and are there any necessary changes that we think need to be made,” Chabane said.

As 2014 marks the 20th year of freedom and democracy after the first general democratic elections, Chabane announced that a draft of the 20 Year Review of freedom will be presented to Cabinet and “once it is approved by Cabinet, we will then present it to the public and publish it for everyone to see”.

With regards to what can be expected after the elections, Chabane emphasised that government remains competent to function, even after Parliament is closed, until the new President is elected by Parliament.

“The current administration continues to function until the new President is elected, whereby the next President will then appoint the new Cabinet. For our term, we will continue with normal Cabinet meetings to run the administration…

“When the new Cabinet comes into place, we would have prepared handover reports per department, per administration and per Cabinet. When the new administration comes, we would hand over the plans, and our preparations for the implementation of the National Development Plan.

“It is that administration’s responsibility to look at what we have done and amend it to suit their needs and their new focus and begin to implement,” Chabane said.