Legislation is being prepared that will pave the way for a single public service, President Thabo Mbeki said Sunday.

The president was speaking to reporters following the mid-year Cabinet Lekgotla at which a range of issues were discussed, from interventions in the economy to spur economic growth, to the development of human resources.

On the question of a single public service, the president conceded that it was a "complex process" that could not be achieved "at one go".

This was because of the complexities involved in integrating the different tiers at all levels, including the question of pensions, as public servants at municipal level belong to different pension schemes to the Government Employees Pension Fund.

Thus, the integration process would take time, said the president, adding that "the cost implications of each stage [of the process towards integration] is something that we are working on".

One hurdle towards greater integration of the three tiers of government is that of the Batho Pele (People First) programme.

The Batho Pele programme encompasses such issues as work ethic and professionalism and attitude of officials to the public as well as speed of service.

Here, an agreement has been reached with SALGA (the South African Local Government Association) to extend this national and provincial programme to local government, the president said.

Government remained committed, he said, to "improving our oversight" with regard to the implementation of the Batho Pele principles.

In a related development, post offices countrywide are to be used to a greater extent to roll out government services.

The capacity of post offices to do this will be boosted by increased investments by the state in broadband provision, said President Mbeki.

These "linkages with the people" will accompany the multi-purpose centres that are already providing such services.

"We have a got a very big post office infrastructure and we must bring those post offices into that system so that somebody must be able to go to the post office and access many government services there, which means you need that broadband capacity," he said.

In another development, government has taken a decision to boost the procurement of goods and services it uses from small and medium sized enterprises.

Of the ten biggest items - whether they are goods or services - used by the state, the intention is to procure 85 percent of these from small and medium-sized enterprises, President Mbeki said.

"This is in order to encourage the growth and development of this sector in the economy, with a particular focus of course ion the impact it would have on unemployment," he said.

Another implication to this, however, is an intervention needed by government to ensure that these small companies would have the capacity to supply these services and goods at the requisite standard of quality.

Another important issue is the development in the country of an integrated poverty benchmark.

"The country doesn't have - so far - an integrated system to measure poverty, so we need to ensure that we have some indices which reflect on this matter," President Mbeki said.

This is also ongoing work, being led by Statistics South Africa, he said.

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