Parliament wants to see CGE be more visible, effective - women, youth and persons with disabilities committee chair

CAPE TOWN - The chairperson of Parliament’s women, youth and persons with disabilities committee, Liezl van der Merwe, said that Parliament wanted to see the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) be more visible, impactful and effective in their role.

The parliamentary committee will have to redo the work of the former committee by recruiting five commissioners for the body, after the Constitutional Court on Friday declared the previous process to have been invalid because of an inadequate public participation process.

Van der Merwe said the committee would meet early in September to chart the way forward.

She said that the committee would have to study Friday’s Constitutional Court judgment to ensure it meets the deadline of appointing new commissioners before the 12-month deadline.

But she said that the committee has already refined the public participation process of its predecessors during the recent recruitment of board members for the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA).

Van der Merwe said the committee was concerned about the non-binding nature of the recommendations made by the commission, as well as accessibility, especially by rural communities.

"I think when we do restart the process of finding new people to serve on the CGE, we will be making these points in order to find a common understanding of where we want to take the CGE in the seventh administration of Parliament."

Five commissioners, including the chairperson and her deputy, are affected by the court ruling, although the court made it clear that the judgment did not mean they were unsuitable for their roles.