The Public Service Commission says it will investigate more than 2,000 senior government officials to verify their qualifications.
THE PUBLIC Service Commission (PSC) says it will investigate more than 2,000 senior government officials to verify their qualifications.
The probe follows acting Public Service and Administration Minister Thulas Nxesi’s revelation that more than 2,000 senior officials did not have qualifications for the positions they occupied in the national and provincial governments earlier this year.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, Corruption Watch’s executive director Karam Singh weighed in on the reported probe by the PSC.
“The Public Service Commission is an important institution in our constitutional democracy in ensuring that we have a sound public service that is constitutionally compliant and they clearly have an anti-corruption mandate. If you look at existing anti-corruption strategies, one is ensuring that we have ethical leadership, and the other one ensures that we have professionalised and skilled employees across the public service,” Singh said.
He added that one of the ways state capture functioned was through irregular appointments and fake qualifications.
“It is very important in executing its mandate in ensuring that we have clean a public service that these investigations take place, and that if there are findings of irregularities in ways in which people were appointed without appropriate qualification, that will result in the removal of those people from the system.”
Singh indicated that this is an area that has required this type of intervention “for the longest time”; the allegations were already there for many years, with people appointed into senior positions either without qualifications or without the appropriate qualifications.
“It is absolutely critical that the public service gets its house in order and has a proper independent investigation, and that real consequences follow on from that investigation, including the possibility of people being removed from their posts due to fake or inadequate qualifications,” said Singh.
He concluded by saying that in these cases of corruption, service delivery is affected.
“When we talk about the fight against corruption, we often talk about the effect of money, criminal collusion and bribery. Corruption costs different areas, including ensuring that there is transparency in the system and ethical conduct.”
