Lies, deceit and total ignorance of facts, the D.A's modus of operandi Johannesburg, The Gauteng Economic Development Agency (GEDA) notes with total dismay the continued peddling of lies by Democratic Alliance's Jack Bloom (see here) and the total disregard of basic journalistic tenant by the Citizen's Monday 23rd February 2009 edition claiming that our agency gave the former Chief Executive Carl Niehaus a lavishing and hero's farewell.

Despite lack of any proof or supporting document to back-up the Democratic Alliance's Jack Bloom sms claim that, the agency used tax payers money to pay for Carl Niehaus alleged farewell party and the subsequent revelation that the details Bloom is referring to were factually incorrect, the revered newspaper went ahead with the printing of a factually incorrect article giving Bloom's nonsense credence.

As a matter of fact, GEDA did not organize nor pay for any farewell function or lunch for Niehaus. On the contrary, the lunch Bloom refers to was a welcome and introduction function for the then GEDA Chief Executive Mr. Keith Khoza to the top management of the agency with Mr. Niehaus having long gone from GEDA. It is very much expected from the D.A to continue peddling lies and desist even on matters that are straight forward but it's totally unacceptable for our colleagues in the media to be led deliberately on a wild-goose chase by somebody who has a history of harvesting on his own lies in the name of the official opposition for many years.

At no point is our good newspaper or the irritic Mr. Bloom telling us about who attended the said farewell, what was lavish about the lunch and all the other details normally required to test the bona fides of such a claim. What this tells us is that, if you are Jack Bloom, everything you say to the media and the public will be attended to despite a known fact of his perpetual fishing in the dark skills. We would like to volunteer Mr. Bloom for a lie detector and credibility test which we are convinced he will fail hands down.

GEDA will not be deterred from its work of attracting investors to the province and driving the economic agenda for Gauteng City Region by baseless accusations and associations. We remain on track with our programme and since our inception over R10billion worth of investment have been generated into the province, a leading multi-national company is about to open a multi-million diapers plant in Kempton Park through our expert facilitation and now South Africa based companies are set to benefit out of our on-going work of securing business opportunities in the 2014 Brazilian FIFA World Cup.

Statement issued by Barba Gaoganediwe, Spokesperson for the Gauteng Economic Development Agency (GEDA), February 23 2009