By OBAKENG MAJE
7 December 2025- The Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) has raised a flag against the R28 million refurbishment and upgrades to the existing Taung Hotel School and Convention Centre construction project. This comes after the project was brought to a grinding halt due to irregularities and disputes.
The North West MEC for Department of Economic Development, Environment, Conservation and Tourism, Bitsa Lenkopane said the Taung Hotel School and Convention Centre construction project is one of the six projects that are all clustered together. Lenkopane said other projects are the hotel gate construction, security fence, residential area for learners and water reticulation and sewer control system.
“Now, this is the sixth project related to the construction of the Taung Hotel School and Convention Centre. This is a multi-year project that started a long time ago. In the 2025/26 financial year, we had an audit which has to cover the work from 2016 till to date. And it revealed a number of things that the department has to undergo as part of the audit action plan.
“Amongst those would be to look into the irregularities that happened and to apply corrective measures. Yes, there is no work happening in terms of construction, but there is a lot of work that is happening to respond to the issues that were raised by the AGSA, which I think the department is almost at the point of concluding the investigations,” she said.
Lenkopane further said her department is also in the process of concluding the dispute between the department and the implementing agency, which is Independent Development Trust (IDT). She added that they had to respond to the findings of the investigations, including things that AGSA has revealed.
“Now, we urge the community to bear with us because we are at the point where immediately after the conclusion of the dispute between the department and the IDT, we are intending to explore other avenues of coming up with implementing agency that will then carry the contract of the Taung Hotel School and Convention Centre construction project.
“The contractor was not fired, but he could not reach an agreement with IDT, which is the implementing agency that appointed him. However, this matter is between the two, but where we are as government, we are confident that in the new commencement of the year, we would have then dealt with all these issues that were raised and have new implementing agency, which would be able to sped up the process,” said Lenkopane.
She said the Taung Hotel School and Convention Centre construction project is also in line with Taung Skull where they also have six projects. Lenkopane said they have other projects like Thomeng toilets that were abandoned due to investigation surrounding it since 2014.
“However, as the department, we will proceed upon conclusion of the investigations and disputes, which are unavoidable,” she said.
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