Corruption: Ministers' contempt of SCOPA must be addressed
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will report three Ministers to the Presidency's Monitoring and Evaluation Unit for consistently failing to account to Parliament for corruption and mismanagement in their departments.
The Ministers are Gugile Nkwinti (Rural Development and Land Reform), Thembelani Nxesi (Public Works) and Richard Baloyi (Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs).
These ministers either failed to show up or were unable to effectively account to Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) for the last three consecutive special meetings called to discuss plans to deal with management crises in their departments.
Nkwinti, Nxesi and Baloyi are responsible for three of the worst performing government departments. All three departments received disclaimer audit opinions on their finances from the Auditor General.
Despite an acknowledgement by the Director -General of the Department of Rural Development and Land Affairs that the department is dysfunctional, the Minister did not appear before SCOPA and sent a late apology.
The Deputy Minister did appear, but was unable to assure the Committee that the systemic failure of the process to manage land redistribution would be resolved. He left early because he "needed to move house".
The Minister of Public Works arrived near the end of the meeting and needed to be briefed before he could answer my question on when he would meet with the Audit Committee to address the collapse of the internal audit function in his department.
The Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs arrived late and could not interact effectively given that he was not aware of the earlier discussion.
The Special Investigating Unit has found that R30bn per annum is leaking from the public financial system.
Ministers cannot continue to hide behind officials who rotate with such regularity that the perpetrators who permit this massive leakage from the public coffers have left the department by the time they are due to appear before SCOPA. We do not want to hear from ministers that "nobody was found to be responsible".
The National Development Plan states that "political will is essential to combat [the] scourge" of corruption. The apparent unwillingness of certain ministers and senior officials to engage with SCOPA shows an absence of political will to practice good governance and denies effective service delivery to the poor, most vulnerable members of our society
The Presidency and Minister of Monitoring and Evaluation, Collins Chabane, must now make good on the promise in the State of the Nation address that government will not be complacent in the fight against corruption. These Ministers must be held to account for their "couldn't-care-less" attitudes.
Statement issued by Dr. Dion George MP, DA Representative on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, February 23 2012
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