Premier

I have been informed of the following:

The below data has been sourced from the Department of the Premier’s People Management Programme, which provides people management services to 11 of the Western Cape Government’s 13 departments. The Western Cape Education Department and Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness operate on a decentralised people management service delivery model and are therefore responsible for their own people management practices. Consequently, information relating to these departments is not held centrally and must be sourced and validated by the respective departments before it can be reported. It is suggested that questions related to these matters are addressed to the relevant ministers.

(1)(a)

(b) In the Western Cape Government (11 Departments), posts are activated and funded upon approval to fill. Once approved for filling, funded posts enter the recruitment process and are advertised in accordance with the prescribed recruitment procedures. Accordingly, there are no funded posts approved for filling that have not been advertised.

(c) (i) what is the longest period for which a vacancy has remained unfilled in each WCG department

d) (i)

(c)ii and (d)(ii) The time taken to fill posts was influenced by the completion of sequential recruitment activities, including shortlisting, interviews, candidate assessments, and vetting processes, as well as dependencies on panel and candidate availability, and the turnaround times associated with obtaining the required approvals and concurrence in line with governance and regulatory requirements.

(2) Across the period 2021/22 to 2025/26, underspending in the Province on Compensation of Employees (CoE) was consistently below 1 per cent of the provincial budget on aggregate.

The underspending was mainly due to delays in filling vacant posts, staff attrition, resignations, retirements, internal promotions, and lengthy recruitment processes, often exacerbated by challenges in sourcing the required skills.

From 2023/24 onwards, national directives such as DPSA Circular 49 of 2023 and subsequent controls, further slowed recruitment through additional approval and concurrence requirements.

Additional contributing factors which impacted recruitment included organisational design reviews, realignment to strategies, and programme-specific issues (e.g. high turnover in technical sectors).

These delays were carefully managed during the year across departments. To address these challenges, departments implemented a range of remedies, including accelerated and targeted recruitment drives, the use of temporary and agency staff to sustain service delivery and ongoing efforts to rebuild workforce capacity where necessary. Further details are typically available in the relevant sections of each department’s annual report.

The detail per department per financial year is attached at Annexure A.