By OBAKENG MAJE
Ad Hoc Committee on Section 100 in North West chairperson, Chia Dodovu said a lot still need to be done to improve the situation in North West. Dodovu who submitted the report to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) for adoption, said the intervention in terms of Section 100 of the Constitution in North West should continue until the national executive undertakes a review process.
In 2018, certain provincial government departments were put under administration after the collapse of service delivery, rampant corruption, and malfeasance allegations were leveled against the fifth administration under the former North West Premier, Supra Mahumapelo stewardship.
“The IMTT should continue to closely monitor the implementation of directives to ensure the achievement of outstanding priorities in Section 100(1)(b) departments.
The challenges in the North West Human Settlements department is addressed urgently.
“The national executive must monitor the performance of the province and institute early warning information systems to detect problems before they escalate into deeper crisis. However, at least the departments are fully capacitated at senior levels with qualified and experienced personnel and that skills transfer happen so that administration leaves a stable senior management leadership in place,” Dodovu said.
He further said the North West Public Works department should attend to the accommodation needs of departments, especially of the North West Social Development. Dodovu added that alternatively, the IMTT should look into dissolution of the function of property management from the North West Public Works back to other departments as a long-term solution to the current problem.
“The Minister of Transport together with the North West MEC for Community Safety and Transport Management should urgently resolve the issues around an inability to promptly respond to the transport needs of the North West Department of Health including the procurement and maintenance of EMS fleet.
“Also the law enforcement agencies address issues of capacity, integrity, and allegations of corruption in their own ranks, where it is alleged that some criminal cases are fully investigated or are being withdrawn without valid reasons and whistle blowers and witnesses not being protected,” he said.
Dodovu said the should be progress in all the criminal cases be opened with the Hawks and the SIU be urgently considered by the NPA, particularly those that are subject to Section 100 intervention, and they be quarterly reported to the NCOP for close monitoring.
He said that all the role players engage one another in good faith and work together with a common view of restoring good governance and accountability culture in order to improved service delivery in the province.
“We recommend that proper and sustainable internal control measures, fraud prevention systems, monitoring and evaluation, audit units and independent audit committees be put in place.
“The consequence management be enforced in all incidents of unauthorised, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure; possible abuse of the Supply Chain Management (SCM) system including fraud, corruption, and improper conduct,” said Dodovu.
However, the North West MEC for Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (COGHSTA), Mmoloki Cwaile said: “We, as a provincial government, are of the view that Section 100 has succeeded, despite few of other presenting challenges. The progress has been recorded since S100 invocation on North West and that the NCOP in its interaction with law enforcement, on 11 June 2021, took note of the progress being done on tackling all allegations of corruption, malfeasance and maladministration.
“We appreciate that the challenges for which S100 was invoked, flow from 5th North West Provincial Government (NWPG) administration, a test is whether or not the 6th
Administration Executive Council (EXCO) has equally failed on its mandate? Has that been tested?”
Cwaile said a critical test – is whether or not continued S100 intervention that does not get reduced in its intensity or strength – does not hold potential to undermine prospects of sustainability of redress made by the S100 Administration?
“Isn’t time for weaning off or engaging on conditional handover – which may include S100 (1) (a) – allowing supervision of national departments, and some form of mitigation against possible relapse?
“Whereas S100 intervention was necessary and doing well even in the face of some challenges – it would be not in the interest and spirit of the constitution to seek to permanentize it over the present electoral period of the 6th NWPG administration, even when it is no longer for redress,” said Cwaile.
He further said it would be an error – a serious constitutional omission not to seek to enable the province to manage its affairs with the national government playing its own prescribed oversight. Cwaile added that the intervention should be supported with an allocation of funds so that the intervention itself should not only depend and use resources made available for services.
NCOP adopted the report after eight provinces voted in favour except the Western Cape province.
The Guardian 