Draft legislation to create a single public service for national, provincial and local government will be presented to the cabinet by November, says the Director-General of the Department of Public Service and Administration, Richard Levin. This follows President Mbeki’s State of the Nation Address in February 2003, when he announced: 'We will this year also finalise the proposal for the harmonisation of systems, conditions of service and norms between the public service in the national and provincial spheres on the one hand, and the municipalities on the other.' The consequent proposal approved by Cabinet in July 2003 outlined a four phased approach to the creation of a single public service - (a) Development of an assignment framework (powers and functions from the national to the local government level); (b) A transfers framework; (c) The rationalisation of local government conditions of service; and (d) The development of framework legislation for the single public service. During a briefing to Parliament’s Public Service and Administration Portfolio Committee, Levin and his deputy, Kenny Govender, said the first draft of the proposed bill would be available for public comment in this fiscal year and should be introduced in Parliament by next October. It is anticipated that the legislation will come into effect by February 2009. Levin said government service delivery was fragmented, with departments and municipalities operating within silos and numerous complications arising in the transfer of personnel between the three spheres of government because of salary inconsistencies. The proposed legislation would establish a framework for a single public service and would regulate organisational and human resource matters in all spheres of government. It would deal with conditions of service, labour relations, corruption and service delivery. The harmonisation of conditions of service requires initially that local government rationalise its conditions of service. This is already happening, said Levin, and there have been many positive developments. Local government is now working towards a single medical aid and a single pension fund. In the public service there is a single pension fund and the recently created single medical aid fund, GEMS. SALGA has divided municipalities into ten categories and wage curves within the categories have been determined, limiting the number of pay scales, and has instituted a job evaluation system. 27 principal job evaluation regions have been designated and the system has been applied in 60 municipalities to date. Despite these efforts, public service and local government conditions are still very far apart. The bill will also provide for uniform information and communication technology through the establishment of multipurpose community centres which would deliver as many government services at one point as possible. Levin said the aim was to have one such centre operational in every municipality by 2014, and there were also plans to establish urban government service 'delivery malls'. 'Given the potential for integration offered by information and communication technologies, it may be possible in future to apply for an ID book at a clinic, for example, or to pay traffic fines at a supermarket. The technology already exists for many of these innovations and there have been isolated breakthroughs in the public and private sectors,' he told the committee. A chapter of the bill will incorporate the provisions of the previously published Municipal Employees Bill (see the August 2005 issue of the Briefing), which regulates the transfer of municipal staff across government spheres. A new uniform remuneration policy for the entire public sector would also facilitate the transfer of powers and functions across spheres, to allow services to be delivered at the most appropriate level, and would enable the deployment of managers to where they are most needed. A document tabled at the meeting – Towards Legislation for the Single Public Service – described this aspect as follows - 'The Constitution provides that national and provincial governments must, by agreement, assign to a municipality functions that would be more effectively administered locally, in cases where the municipality has the capacity to administer the functions. The Constitution and legislation also require the transfer of specific functions, as in the cases of the departments of health and DWAF. One of the implications of a transfer of functions between the spheres is that the personnel who perform that function must also be transferred. In terms of the Labour Relations Act, the function and the personnel must be transferred as ‘a going concern’. In addition, the conditions of service of transferring staff may not be reduced in the process. 'Numerous complications have arisen in transferring personnel between the spheres. The conditions of service in the public service and local government are significantly different. In the public service, a job is evaluated and calculated to have a certain job weight, which corresponds to a salary grade. The job weight determines the salary, and the salary grades are uniform throughout the public service, with some sectoral exceptions. In a municipality, remuneration is determined in line with the revenue collected by the municipality. Affordability to a large extent determines the salary level. In practice this means that there are a multiplicity of pay scales in local government. 'This makes the transfer of staff very complex, given that overall conditions of service must be retained. Add to this the fact that transferring employees are likely to have to resign from their pension funds, to their detriment, and may have to join a different medical aid. Their union might not be represented in the bargaining council of the sphere to which they have moved. Two strategies must be employed. Firstly, mechanisms must be found in the short term to make the transfers easier within the existing constraints. Secondly, conditions of service must be harmonised as far as possible to ensure mobility. In this regard progress was made in the establishment of a framework for the assignment of functions to local government as well as a framework for the transfer of staff between spheres.' As an illustration of this, Levin told the committee that the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry was recently forced to abort the planned transfer of 8 000 of its employees to municipalities after labour unions invoked labour relations legislation. The Personnel Expenditure Review, currently being conducted by the Department of Pubic Service and Administration, will inform the development and implementation of a new remuneration policy for the public sector. The aim of this project is to review current remuneration practices within local government and the public service and inform the development of an adequately benchmarked remuneration framework. However, it seems clear that the envisaged bill will meet with rigorous interrogation by MPs, many of whom raised concerns about the constitutional division of powers and functions among the three spheres of government. As the Briefing has preciously reported, there is also much unhappiness about the proposed legislation among local government employees, who fear it will give the national and provincial governments unfettered rights to override municipalities.