PUBLIC WORKS BILL DEVELOPMENT PROCESS DRAGS ON

PUBLIC WORKS BILL DEVELOPMENT PROCESS DRAGS ON

• 04 September 2024
• Built Environment
• SA Legal Academy

The finalisation of a draft Public Works Bill is on hold pending the outcome of an apparently imminent seventh administration policy development process. This is according to Public Works & Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson, whose remarks preceded a presentation to members of the National Assembly’s Public Works & Infrastructure Committee on 4 September 2024. The presentation focused on upcoming legislation, including a Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) Amendment Bill released in draft form in May 2024, as SA Legal Academy reported at the time.

Against that backdrop, the presentation document’s expectation that a Public Works Bill will be ready for tabling in Parliament before the end of the 2024/25 financial year is probably unrealistic. This is especially noting the document’s reference to several pre-tabling steps yet to be completed before a draft Bill is ready for the required public consultation process.

Nearly three and half years have passed since the previous Parliament’s Public Works & Infrastructure Committee issued a media statement announcing that the department had been ‘instructed’ to develop a draft Public Works Bill clearly stating its mandate and ‘powers of co-ordination’. At the time, it was apparently agreed that the proposed new piece of legislation should include clauses intended to ensure the ‘uniform implementation’ of a ‘standardised policy’ across ‘all spheres of government’.

Presumably with that in mind, in her 2021/22 budget vote speech former Public Works & Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille anticipated gazetting a draft Bill for public comment during that financial year.

Yet the presentation document refers to a process begun as early as 2012. Something is wrong.

This notwithstanding, depending on the outcome of the seventh administration’s policy development process, the Public Works Bill’s overarching objectives could include:

• providing ‘a legislative basis for public employment, empowerment and skills development programmes in the public works sector’, and
• enabling the Minister to ‘monitor and evaluate the achievement(s), progress and performance of organs of state performing public works functions’.

Please click the links below for more information:

• presentation document
• 2021 committee media statement
• Former Minister Patricia de Lille’s 2021/22 budget vote speech
• SA Legal Academy report on the draft CIDB Amendment Bill

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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