Most of the Witbank participants said the resources and their allocation were fine, “… that’s
fine with all the computers and that, once a month you can fill in a form for things and whatever station, what you need...if its available, some things aren’t available but mostly, is no problem.”
Stationery resource allocation in the Johannesburg LC, according to most Individual and Group CSO and Supervisor participants, except for one CSO, is at the most, an uncertain matter, and there are delays in replacement of depleted or unusable items. The allocation of pens and other related stationery is problematic according to most of the Johannesburg Individual and Group CSO and Supervisor participants, “… it’s a battle to get anything in this
place... nobody’s got a calculator... When you need scissors... you run around for the scissors... clients take our pens because surely you must give the client the pen to sign. He leaves with your pen. You’re stuck. You go ask for a pen, ‘no you got a pen last week’. But you explain to the supervisor, ‘my pen was just taken now.’ …they must believe us... Just give me a pen so that the work can continue. Now you standing there, calling me to the office and just talking about why, where’s your pen. It doesn’t make sense.”
The irregular and reluctance of the people in charge to allocate stationery is cause for despondency according to a Johannesburg participant, “It’s as if the person who’s in charge
of the stationery, I don’t say is the person here, I believe it’s from the provincial office... isn’t doing their job properly... Sometimes you think you don’t even feel like filling in a form because you know you not gonna get it.” A CSO participant went to an extent of self-
providing for pens, “...for periods you get pens neh, and then for long periods you don’t,
there are no pens. Then out of my own, I buy my own pens… the pen that I buy I have to share with the public. I have come to the point where I say to the public, ‘please, you must come with your own pens’… This is my pen, and I can decide whether I want to share my pen with you or not.”
According to a Johannesburg CSO, the wait for replacement of stationery is long, which compels the CSO to, from time to time, move from his/her desk and go to colleagues to borrow stationery the CSO may not have, “is frustrating to go to my colleague and say listen,
can I have your, can I borrow your stapler?” However, not all colleagues are willing to
share use of stationery allocated to them individually, they perceive such stationery allocations to be exclusively intended for their use only.
The irony of the stationery challenge, according to some Johannesburg Individual CSO and Supervisor Group participants is that the frontline CSO staff do not have lock-up facilities for safe keeping of the very stationery resources entrusted to them and personal possession and or belongings, “…our staplers are being, being taken from our tables. Because we’ve got no
lock-up facilities... 8For all the years that I have worked for the Department of Labour, I have never had a thing to put my bag in. Now recently, just before we came here, I got a little cabinet but it cannot lock… There was a stage that I had to take my stapler in my bag. Taking it every time to home. If I leave it at the desk, you know it’s gone. And that is how I went through my staplers.”
Another stationery challenge in the Johannesburg LC is the quality of the stationery supplied, “…stationery yes, even though they are of cheap quality, you use the stapler of Labour a
month, after a month is broken… then you have to stay without it until it’s replaced maybe after a year or after whatever. But when they replace it, you must give them the broken one
8
The cited CSO participant has been in the employ of the DoL for 37 years.
yet when you give them the broken one, they will still give you the same thing that you can use in a period of a week then it brakes again.”
Few Witbank CSOs cited stationery challenges, “With stationery ei, we do stay without
sometimes the stationery, not have it then we use what I have so that work can go on.”
Another Witbank CSO mentioned the date stamp going missing in the office, “Ever since I
got here I never had my own date stamp or my own certifying stamp, there’s just issues around that… you need, like guard them because when you just leave them around, they steal them... I’m taking applications, UI applications right now and I need the stamp… but then I understand it’s like there was fraud behind that.”
As far as stationery is concerned, it was revealed that staff are not timeously and consistently supplied with needed stationery to service clients as required and one Johannesburg CSO resorts to buying pens from his/her own income. The implication of stationery distribution system at the Johannesburg Labour Centre, in particular, should be a fiscal allocations concern to the DoL if staff are subjected to purchase stationery with their own money for office use and clients asked to bring their own pens when visiting DoL offices.
If the findings are a measure of the Public Finance Management Act 1 of 1999 (PFMA), then even the PFMA regulatory systems may be inefficient and ineffectively applied in the DoL. Another suggestion to the stationery shortage as espoused by some participants could be just a matter of incompetence on the part of persons responsible for the supply chain. Therefore, the time wasted as a result of stationery shortages seems costly and hampers smooth service delivery (Fraser, 1989). Notably, in Witbank, the stationery allocation challenge was not as forthrightly stated as a crisis but as merely incidental.