Speech by Deputy Minister of Defence and Military Veterans ...

Honourable members, the ministry is pleased to report that parliament hassubsequently passed the Military Veterans Bill and it was assented to by thePresident and promulgated into law in December 2011. I personally wish to thankCommittees of both Houses for the work done in cleaning this legislation forapproval by parliament. Its commencement date has since been proclaimed asthe 1 st April 2012.Chairperson, the Department is committed to delivering the benefits as espousedin Section 5 of the Military Veterans Act, and will do so progressively to thoseeligible for such support. To this end, draft regulations to inform theimplementation of this Act will be brought to parliament before the end of thesecond semester.We wish to call on sister departments in the Social Development Cluster to helpexpedite the finalisation of suitable modalities for the roll-out of these benefits,which their respective departments are responsible for.Honourable Members, last year we undertook to ensure that a fully functionaldepartment is in place. By the end of March 2012, 27 senior posts mainly, werestaffed and further appointments have since been made. It is worth mentioningthat we will require an amount of R56 million to be able to staff all the posts thatare in the structure/organogram of the department, which in itself is already morethan the entire budget of the Department of Military Veterans in this financialyear.The pace at which the department’s structure is being populated is still, notsatisfactory, not withstanding the assistance solicited from the Human ResourcesDivision of the Department of Defence (DOD) in this regard.Chairperson, to use the language of the community which bore me, “re sila rehlatlegile” meaning in military language that we are firing the gun as we are2