The Portfolio Committee on Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation is pleased with the work the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) is doing with reduced capacity and wants this trend to continue. The department briefed the committee today on the Presidential hotline, the frontline service delivery monitoring report and citizen-based monitoring tool for 2022/23, as well as the first and second quarters of the 2023/24 financial year.
Led by the Minister, Ms Paropene Ramokgopa, the DPME said that despite its limited number of staff, it strives to achieve its constitutional mandate to guide other departments and appear before any parliamentary committee when it is necessary. It cited its appearance before the Standing Committee on Accounts to provide a briefing on its role during the flooding that occurred in KwaZulu-Natal and other provinces. The department informed the committee that it has put procedures in place to improve the management of national disasters in the future
As for the Presidential hotline, this is being digitised and remodelled. Once this process is completed the hotline will be relaunched. The department also highlighted various challenges, including the low responsiveness of sector departments and provinces, poor management accountability and the lack of memorandums of understanding between the DPME, the provinces and municipalities.
Ms Ramokgopa assured the committee that the President has signed performance agreements with all his Ministers and that the departments’ annual performance plans form part of their performance agreements. The DPME will provide the committee with a presentation of Ministers’ performance assessments when it next appears before the committee.
The Chairperson of the committee, Mr Qubudile Dyantyi, concluded by saying that a strategic planning workshop will be held soon, to which the department will be invited, to discuss how the committee will operate until the end of the sixth Parliament. Determining the extent to which government departments have met their National Development Plan targets will be discussed in that session.
Source: Parliament of South Africa