By OBAKENG MAJE
The North West Provincial Legislature’s Standing Committee on Provincial Public Accounts (SCOPA) says ‘heads will roll’ after series of corruption, mismanagement of funds and fraud. This comes after the committee received a shocking revelation on cases that were reported to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations (Hawks) and the South African Police Services (SAPS) last year.
This comes after the committee received a shocking revelation on cases that were reported to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations (Hawks) and the South African Police Services (SAPS) last year.
The Scopa provincial chairperson, Job Dliso said they held an oversight meeting with these law enforcement agencies to receive an update on cases opened by the Standing Committee including the 34 cases that were opened by the Inter-Ministerial Task Team on Section 100 Intervention’s Anti-Corruption Task Team led by the National Treasury investigated today.
“Those cases include a case into the R134 million which was erroneously transferred to Bojanala District municipality instead of Rustenburg Local Municipality for housing development from the North West Department of Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (Cogta).
“We have also received a report on the Taung Hotel School project, where a fence and guardhouse was poorly constructed for under R8 million, while the North West Department of Tourism bought the Taung building for R5 million,” said Dliso.
He also said the irregular expenditure of R1.4 billion incurred in the North West Department of Education for several financial years including the irregular expenditure emanating from the R254.1 million stationery contracts that were issued in 2016/17 financial year for 3 years was part of the discussion.
“You will recall that we met with them last year around October where we started to look on the legacy report (Scopa Handover Report), where we highlighted matters that needed to be investigated. We also submitted new cases of alleged mismanagement of funds and we are happy so far that we are working hand-in-hand with law enforcement agencies.
“We have an agreement that they will update us on a monthly basis regarding their investigations. Today, indeed we are happy to say there is progress on all matters that we referred, which I am not going to disclose their merits,” he said.
Dliso added that the progress shows that they are serious on combating corruption in the province and those who are implicated must face the might of the law.
Rustenburg Local Municipality is one of the corrupt municipalities in the province
North West Provincial Legislature’s Chair of Chairs, Mmoloki Cwaile shared the same sentiments. Cwaile said they will ensure that clean governance prevails in the province.
“We have just received a progress report from the senior Hawks officials and we are satisfied with the report that there is progress. However, we have taken note of a few challenges where you found that witnesses want to make statements in the presence of their lawyers, but we’ve also agreed that in the event where they are not complying, section 204 must be applied for, so that they must be forced to give that evidence.
“We have agreed that fourteen days should be sufficient for witnesses to cooperate with the law enforcement agencies. So, we are satisfied that there is serious progress, but we are concerned about the misleading of the Hawks by the government departments on the matter that relates to the R134 million that was allegedly erroneously transferred to the Bojanala District Municipality,” he said.
It was reported that the fraudulent account was allegedly opened by officials at Bojanala District Municipality after erroneously receiving the amount of R134 million from Cogta in the province. According to Cwaile, the Hawks were misled in the statements and closed the case.
“We have agreed the case must be re-opened because we have sufficient evidence that the money that was transferred to Bojanala District was stolen. You cannot have a scenario where you have a trip from Brits to Rustenburg that cost R3 million and a two-day accommodation for officials cost R3.9 million.
“We will continue to interact with the Hawks on Monday to give them further evidence on the matter. Furthermore, the Rustenburg Local Municipality is one of the most corrupt municipalities. The evidence at our disposal shows that the municipality is riddled with corruption and we assure you that those who are implicated will be harshly dealt with,” said Cwaile.
North West Provincial Legislature’s EFF Betty Diale said: “We have received the Hawks report but as the EFF we feel that there is not much progress, however, at least we have a way of making sure that the cases that are placed with the Hawks are investigated.
“We’ve realised that there is a tendency in the Hawks not to follow up the matters and properly investigate them timeously. However, this time around we called them to appear before the Scopa and they came. We highly-appreciate their cooperation in that regard,” Diale said.
DA Chief Whip in the province, Freddy Sonakile said: “We welcomed the brief that was presented by the Hawks. However, we still believe that there is a lot that still need to be done. For the first time in the history of the North West Provincial Legislature, we have seen such a move taking where law enforcers come and give us a feedback.
“Ever since the previous administrations, we have never seen the law enforcers coming in and give us a feedback. This is a milestone for this committee because we have received the feedback in two months.”
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