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Capped leave is expected to grow in costs.
A South African flag flies against a backdrop of flowering jacaranda trees outside the Rosebank police station. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen
The cost and broader impact of leave taken by public service employees over a four-year period have come under scrutiny.
Officials from the Department of Public Service and Administration, alongside the Public Service Commission (PSC), presented these findings to Parliament during a meeting on Wednesday.
PSC commissioner Vusumuzi Mavuso explained to the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration that data was collected from the Personnel and Salary Administration System (Persal) for the period between 2020 and 2023.
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This data focused on various types of leave, including study and sick leave.
Information gathered included the gender, age, and salary levels of personnel from all national and provincial departments, with the exception of the Department of Defence and the State Security Agency (SSA).
“It was quite necessary to collect the data and making sure that we have a sense as to what is happening within the public service, specifically looking into sick and study leave from Persal and to establish whether there is any excessive utilisation of such leave,” Mavuso told MPs.
Capped leave in public service
PSC Director of Employment Management, Renel Singh, reported that as of December 2023, the government spent R16 billion on 9.2 million days of capped leave.
This applied to 189 039 employees out of a total of 1 387 391 in the public service, with about 122 000 of them from the education and health sectors.
Public sector employees appointed before 1 July 2000 retained their capped leave – pre-2000 audited leave converted to working days – which is only paid out in the event of death, retirement, or medical boarding.
Singh said capped leave is expected to grow in costs.
“The costs go up on the basis of cost-of-living adjustments and factors such as promotions and notch upgrades.”
“Capped leave is a moving target, and it is a contingent liability for the state. It is something that the state has to pay to the public servant who chooses to retire,” she said on Wednesday.
Alongside the anticipated future payout costs, there are growing concerns about the potential loss of experienced personnel from the public service sector.
“The health sector has 26 524 officials who have capped leave, and education has 96 096 people who have capped leave, and that raises future concerns in terms of the skills deficit that we may encounter.”
Watch the meeting below:
PSC recommendations on capped leave
Given that capped leave is a “quite expensive cost” for government, the PSC made several recommendations.
Among these was for the National Treasury to perform a detailed cost-based analysis of expected payouts over the next five to ten years.
“There has to be recommendations that need to be made by the National Treasury together with the Department of Public Service and Administration specifically in relation to the negotiation of this particular practice of leave to ascertain what the future costs would be.”
“And it would be feasible for the state to actually incur that cost now or wait for people to exit the system, which could considerably be a higher cost in the future,” Singh explained.
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Another proposal involves allowing employees to convert capped leave into extra pension benefits, in line with Government Employee Pension Fund (GEPF) rules.
“The GEPF offers the option to purchase additional pension and will result in improved retirement benefits.”
This would require the Department of Public Service, the GEPF, and the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) to explore the option from a cost-benefit perspective.
The PSC also urged the department to initiate human resource planning exercises to prepare for the loss of experienced staff due to retirement.
Sick leave for public service employees
Singh presented data showing that the number of public service employees taking sick leave in national departments ranged from 224 649 to 266 445 over the four-year period.
In provincial departments, the range was between 14 041 and 145 301.
“In 2022, there was a spike, but it was the new sick leave cycle, which is the reloading of the 36 days of sick leave over a three-year period,” she remarked.
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Between 2020 and 2023, public servants took between 5.4 million and 7.6 million days of sick leave, with a peak in 2022.
The cost of this leave rose from R8 billion in 2020 to R11.5 billion in 2022, before slightly dropping to R10.1 billion in 2023.
“When we look at costs, we are looking at it from a perspective of employees not being in the office. They are not operating. They are getting paid their salaries, but they are not actually in office.”
Incapacity leave
Temporary incapacity leave peaked in 2021, with 43 878 employees taking 1.4 million days of leave.
This figure decreased in 2022 but rose again in 2023 to 1.3 million days. The cost reached R2.38 billion in 2023.
“Temporary incapacity leave is employee-initiated,” Singh told the committee.
In terms of permanent incapacity leave, which is employer initiated, the police had the highest number of cases, with 696 between 2020 and 2023.
The highest cost of permanent incapacity leave for all government employees was R31.18 million in 2020.
“The costs were relatively far lower than your temporary incapacity leave.”
To address the escalating costs and potential misuse of sick leave, the PSC suggested annual audits by all government departments to identify instances of excessive use and possible misuse by employees.
Departments should also strictly monitor medical certificate submissions to verify sick leave applications.
Finally, the PSC recommended that the Department of Public Service consider placing a cap on temporary incapacity leave.
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