Scopa questions public works department about ’cleaners’ who are assisting in making payments

Cape Town - Members of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts were alarmed on Tuesday to learn that “cleaners” assist in processing claims in the department of Public works and infrastructure.

ANC MP Bheki Hadebe asked the department’s Chief Financial Officer Lesetja Toona about the revelation while the department briefed the committee on what had led to irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure in the Property Management Trading Entity.

Hadebe questioned Toona about using cleaners to process payments, stating that it is out of their scope of work.

“You have used them to do something other than what you employed them for.”

Scopa chairperson Mkhuleko Hlengwa also intervened in the matter.

Toona, however, said that cleaners were not processing payments: “They have never processed payments. We are not using cleaners. We now have full-time people that are processing payments.”

Earlier, Minister Patricia de Lille referred to the entity as having become a “banking account in overdraft”, which had resulted in disputes over leases worth R4.5 billion.

Unresolved irregular expenditure within the entity amounted to R1.5bn while fruitless and wasteful expenditure stood at just over R132 million.

Furthermore, De Lille said the main problem in her oversight role is that the department is resisting the introduction of information technology systems as it wishes to continue working manually.

This, she said, results in corruption within the department.

“We have a lot of overpayments and underpayments in the department. We have now got to the bottom of what is causing the overpayments… who is pressing that button to overpay on a monthly basis.

“In terms of the delegations for the people who are pressing the buttons – doing the constant over expenditure – I discussed with the acting director-general that the way we are going to stop this is to remove the delegations from those people who must pay,” De Lille said.

Hlengwa said he was “fundamentally concerned at the incoherence which prevails at this point in terms of what we are hearing”.

He added that the committee would probably have to do more follow-ups with the department.

“I’m not convinced of most of the things one has heard today.”

He highlighted concerns about the information technology issue in which paperwork was still being submitted manually: “The fact that there is an over-reliance on a paper-based system is a risk to document management in this day and era, but also at the same time, it creates a conducive and enabling environment for corruption to take place and documents to go missing therefore there is no accountability and no consequence management in the absence of documents.”

tarryn-leigh.solomons@inl.co.za

POLITICAL BUREAU

• Patricia de Lille says department’s failure to migrate to IT systems leads to corruption