Cape Town - Parliament was working on capacitating the committee section to ensure that the processing of the written submissions on the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill was completed.
This was the word from Secretary to the National Assembly Masibulele Xaso when chair of chairs Cedric Frolick highlighted the impact of the lack of human resources in the processing of NHI written submissions.
Frolick raised his concerns during the meeting of the National Assembly Programme Committee on Thursday.
He said the national legislature was way behind in processing the written submissions.
“Unless something drastic is done, it is unlikely that we will even get to a stage this year where the process can be completed. It will have a lot of consequences on the passage of that bill.”
Frolick also said the constraints that were in the committee section and the lack of human resources were having a negative impact.
“We cannot sustain this process, Deputy Speaker, unless the committee section is properly resourced. We must be aware of it, but also for concrete action to be taken to support the committee section,” he said.
In response, Xaso said something was being done to capacitate the committee section, and that he and Acting Secretary to Parliament, Baby Tyawa, were working on the matter.
“There will be capacity shortly to ensure the process is not frustrated due to the lack of human resources,” he said.
The bill was tabled in Parliament in August 2019 and referred to the committee for consideration.
The committee received more than 100 000 written submissions after the initial October deadline was moved to October 2019.
This week, the committee held oral hearings after concluding public hearings in all nine provinces.
In November, the committee was briefed by the parliamentary staff on procurement of an external service provider for the processing of the written submissions.
The committee heard at the time that only one service provider responded to the advertisement calling for quotations for the processing of the submissions.
The committee had then agreed to use the parliamentary services instead of the private service providers to process the NHI report.
Political Bureau