Serious inefficiencies in government’s development programme – Surveys
In spite of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s repeated call for the public and private sectors to work closely together to revive South Africa’s stalled economy, considerably worsened by COVID-19, the South African Geomatics Institute (SAGI) has found that Government is “not doing enough” to fast track development.
SAGI’s statement is based on the results of two November surveys conducted among Built Environment professionals in the private sector, the latest in a number of surveys conducted over the past year.
The built environment includes all of the physical parts of where people live and work (homes, buildings, streets, open spaces, and infrastructure), with the professionals surveyed specifically representing experts in the fields of land and engineering surveying, planning, photogrammetry, remote sensing, geographical information systems (GIS) and land management.
Government inertia
SAGI said it undertook the surveys to ascertain the “levels of inertia” industry members had been experiencing dealing with Government, particularly around the subdivision of agricultural land (known in short as Act 70/70).
This followed several complaints received by SAGI in regards to lengthy delays in approval processes, explained Peter Newmarch, President of SAGI.
“The first survey focused on decision time periods, development values, and stalls in application processing, while the second asked respondents to outline the challenges they were experiencing in attempting to follow up on their applications.”
Within the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries,where 170 current applications from the private sector that were awaiting decisions, Newmarch said standard sub-division applications should take no longer than three months.
”In terms of developmental value, the 170 applications revealed a combined value of R10.7 billion.“
Excluding recent applications submitted (43 out of the 170 in total) and only considered the remaining 127 applications that had been in the system for longer than three months, the survey revealed, a “staggering” 61% of applications taking longer than this; 22% of the applications had been sitting in the system for more than a year; while only 39% had been approved in a 3-6 six-month period.
“Part of the problem is that the Department has no legislated turnaround time in respect of applications, Newmarch said.
Respondents indicated that, under the current challenging circumstances, they would even consider a wait of five months to be acceptable, but more than this simply puts projects into jeopardy.
Endemic across all departments
Chairperson of the Western Cape Property Development Forum (WCPDF), Deon van Zyl, noted that the results of the surveys are indicative of the exact same problems experienced by property developers across the board when dealing with government.
“The delays in all approval processes by government departments, across all tiers, demonstrate the lack of understanding of property, or even general, economics.”
He added that delays cost the industry huge amounts of money as teams are placed on standby for months and even years on end.
“And this is at its best. At its worst, when it results in the complete cancellation of projects, as these delays increasingly do, then thousands upon thousands of construction jobs just don’t happen. And then we wonder why there is rampant unemployment and corruption.
Considering the average monthly number of applications sits at around 160, the overall investment values of applications that must be sitting with the Department over the course of a year, including from those in the industry that did not respond to the survey, must be staggering, van Zyl pointed out.
Why the delays?
A concerning statistic arising from the surveys were the high numbers (16.7%) of approvals received in error that were actually meant for other applicants.
“Administrative systems are not what they should be,” said Newmarch.
“Even more concerning was the number of approvals received with errors in them (54% of respondents reported receiving these), necessitating a further application, and a further wait, to rectify these errors before projects could proceed.”
Respondents were also asked if any of their current applications had been deemed either incomplete by the Department, or if additional information had been requested.
Only 2.9% said that they had been informed of incomplete applications and 7.6% had been asked to provide additional information.
For the remainder, there had either simply been no further or very limited communication from the Department on the progress of their application, even when inquiries were made by the applicants.
Asked to offer a rating on a scale from 0 to 5, respondents were asked to rate past communication with the Department based on previous applications, with the average scale response being 1.54.
In terms of current applications awaiting a decision, the average scale response was an alarming 0.96.
Asked to comment further on communications with the Department, respondents reported that the biggest problem lay in telephone lines being unanswered and no or inadequate responses to inquiry emails, while many others simply labeled communication with the Department as “non-existent.”
Echoing Newmarch’s sentiments that this was “highly unacceptable,” Van Zyl notes that the WCPDF was keen to see the government’s eventual response to SAGI on the results.
“We understand that SAGI is formulating both a letter to the Department on the findings, as well as a letter to the President to address the impact of these inefficiencies on investment throughout South Africa.”
SAGI said it intends to run half-yearly surveys, going forward, on all consent processes, in order to monitor year-on-year improvement, identify further bottlenecks and track developmental growth.
No comments: