The Public Service Commission (PSC) which promotes constitutional values, ethics and professionalism in the public service, says it is concerned about the management of discipline in government.
The PSC also aims to rid the public service of corruption and maladministration.
It is working with the department of public service & administration to develop strategies to deal with the problem which has seen public servants on suspension with full pay for as long as four years.
Public servants are suspended while an internal investigation or disciplinary process is under way.
In reply to a question in parliament earlier this year, acting public service and administration minister Thulas Nxesi said that at end-June there were 305 public servants on suspension with full pay at a cost to the taxpayer of R131m.
Of this amount, national departments were responsible for R40,3m and provinces R90,7m with KwaZulu-Natal paying the highest amount of R33,5m followed by Northern Cape at R25m.
Long periods of suspension are often the result of legal action involved in the disciplinary process.
The DA wrote to the PSC to request that it intervene in the “glaring discipline management crisis in the public service”.
In a letter to DA deputy spokesperson on public service and administration Mimmy Gondwe last week, PSC chair Somadoda Fikeni said the PSC has been engaging with the department of public service & administration on discipline management problems in the public service and exploring mechanisms to deal with it. He said the PSC would host a round-table in 2023 to get inputs from stakeholders on strategies to improve and strengthen it.
“A key reform area would be to ensure that disciplinary cases are concluded within the prescribed time frames to avoid a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Gondwe said in a statement last week.
She said that in October the cabinet approved the national framework towards the professionalisation of the public sector, and said “the lofty ambitions, set out in the framework will be difficult to achieve if our country’s public service remains bogged down by a perpetual backlog of disciplinary cases that distract from the actual business of delivering services to the public”.
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