Submission on the Public Service Commission Bill.

In summary, HSF submits that the Bill should craft a role for the PSC in appointing persons to high-level positions in the public service – as the Constitution requires and in line with government’s own policy vision for the PSC set out in its ‘National Framework Towards the Professionalisation of the Public Sector.’1 2. [...] The Constitutional Court said as much in the First Certification Judgment when it held that: “an independent PSC should have some role in the process of appointing, promoting, transferring and dismissing members of the public service…”2 1 National Framework Towards the Professionalisation of the Public Sector, available here, at page 72. [...] Indeed, government’s own National Framework Towards the Professionalisation of the Public Sector explicitly envisages that the PSC should play a role in appointing high-level personnel in the public service, making the Bill’s failure to provide for such a role all the more surprising.7 3 Section 196(4)(d) of the Constitution. [...] In conclusion, HSF has submitted that the Bill falls short of ensuring that the PSC can effectively carry out its constitutional mandate by not crafting it a role in the appointment of high-level officials in the public service. [...] This not only represents a refusal to learn from the hard lessons of the State Capture era – it also ignores the PSC’s constitutional design and government’s own express policy vision for the PSC set out in the National Framework Towards the Professionalisation of the Public Sector.