QUESTIONS UNIT OBSTRUCTING DA
Introduction
In two previous stories on InsidePolitics (A Disturbing Trend: Part 1of2 & Part 2of2) the tactics used by Ministers to avoid answering written parliamentary questions were discussed in great detail.
However, Ministers are not the only culprits trying to undermine this parliamentary mechanism. Also guilty is Parliament's Questions Unit.
Parliament’s website states that the purpose of the questions unit is to process questions put by members for oral and written reply. The unit’s tasks to:
•Screen and edit original questions
•Liaise with Government Departments (verify details of questions, check whether a Minister is responsible)
•Maintain a correspondence registery
However, staff at the unit are trying to prevent the DA from asking parliamentary questions often; blurring the role they are meant play as parliamentary officers, (to promote oversight and accountability) with the stance usually taken by the ANC, which is to protect their politicians at all costs.
The unit does this in a number of different ways, most often editing questions so that they lose their original meaning, and thus their political significance, and misapplying rules in order to deem questions out of order.
Recently the unit has started a new trend to prevent DA questions from being answered by departments. This trend will be discussed below.
Removal of questions from the order paper
At the end of March this year the DA posed a series of parliamentary questions to all government departments that asked the following:
With regard to every type of infrastructure which the Minister’s department or any of the entities that he/she presides over (a) are responsible to provide, what is the backlog in respect of the provisioning of new infrastructure in terms of (i) the number of infrastructure units and (ii) rand value and (b) are responsible to maintain or upgrade, what is the backlog in terms of (i) the type of maintenance and upgrading required and (ii) rand value?
This question was screened by the questions unit and appeared on the questions paper without changes. In other words, the questions unit was of the opinion that it complied with all the rules and regulations that govern written questions.
By 14 September most departments had submitted replies to this question. However, five departments had failed to do so, namely Health, Home Affairs, Safety and Security, Minerals and Energy and Water Affairs and Forestry.
Though an issue in itself (the question was submitted six months previously and departments are expected to reply to a question within ten days) the questions unit subsequently made the unilateral decision to remove the five outstanding questions from the order paper, claiming that the question was too vague and did not permit a specific reply.
Three points need to be made in this regard.
Firstly, the usual procedure followed by the question’s unit is that if a question is ruled out of order it is rejected immediately and does not make it onto the internal question paper. Once a question has made it onto the internal question paper it is deemed to have been processed and is in order with the parliamentary rules and regulations. This means that originally the questions unit had no objection to this question being posed to all departments.
Secondly, nearly all departments replied to the question by providing detailed responses on the infrastructure they were responsible for as well as the related backlogs. Therefore the reason given by the questions unit is completely unfounded.
Thirdly, it appears that the questions unit failed to inform the five departments mentioned above that the question had in fact been r
| Posted on 21/9/2007
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