Chris Campbell, CEO of Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA), has expressed reservations about the proposed creation of an Office of the Engineer-General within the public sector, warning that it may introduce unnecessary bureaucracy and additional costs without tackling the core issues behind South Africa’s infrastructure challenges.
Chris Campbell. Supplied by CESA
In response to reports that the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) plans to proceed with establishing the Office of the Engineer-General South Africa, Campbell questioned the effectiveness of adding “yet another” oversight structure. While oversight bodies, to an extent, play an important role in promoting accountability and service delivery, their effectiveness depends heavily on factors such as independence, adequate resources and institutional capacity.
While South Africa has institutions such as the Human Rights Commission, the Public Protector and the Auditor-General, these bodies often face challenges in maintaining their independence and ensuring their recommendations are implemented effectively.
Campbell raises critical questions: “Is an Office of the Engineer-General going to be able to effect meaningful change in infrastructure delivery that ensures value for money? Will it have the capacity and authority to exercise oversight on the full span of public entities responsible for public infrastructure delivery and add value to resolving the many issues that limit their own abilities to fulfil their obligations in this respect? Will it simply do what other such oversight bodies already do?”
“Regrettably, there is little evidence of any of the current findings of such existing bodies, leading to any level of consequence management that would deter the levels of maladministration evident in many of these public entities,” he averred.
Campbell also pointed out that the real obstacles to infrastructure delivery are multifaceted. These are both internal to public entities and external to these entities. Some of the external issues relate to organised criminal activity, vandalism and corruption. “This is not limited to the prevalence of what has commonly been referred to as “the construction mafia”. We need to look further at why water supply systems are vandalised and why hospitals and schools are destroyed by fires, creating demand for water tanker contracts and rebuilding existing facilities – when in reality there is genuine need for adding new facilities to meet the growing demand for such public facilities.”
Campbell urged the government to prioritise the professionalisation of the public sector, enforce consequence management and address the damaging legacy of cadre deployment. “This is without having ensured that persons responsible for managing such service delivery and infrastructure have the requisite skills and competencies to do so and without interference by non-executive partisan actors that has left many technical departments technically under-resourced and most often not managed or mismanaged.”
“Years of such appointments have overlooked the need for competence in senior management. Now we have a ‘logjam’ – even if we stop hiring unqualified individuals, the system is still clogged with people in such positions who lack the skills and knowledge to lead. In technical departments, junior engineers reporting to senior managers, who lack the requisite skills and competencies become demoralised and leave the public sector, when in reality we need to retain and develop such people.”
To move forward, Campbell called for a more practical and collaborative approach: “Let’s work harder to foster the partnership with the private sector to strengthen public sector departments with people who possess the correct skills and competencies and who additionally display the requisite behavioural traits to fulfil the role as a committed “servant” of the public.”
