Cape Town - Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu has said they were dealing with a situation that made them uncomfortable in so far as the sheer number of investigations they found underway and two more approved after they were appointed.
“What makes us uncomfortable is that the nature of investigations are all corruption-related, and quite a number of people in the department are under investigation.
“We are noting, in the main, it does look like most of this corruption is related to Lepelle Water,” Mchunu said.
He made the statement when he led the department’s delegation to brief the water and sanitation portfolio committee on investigations conducted by the department, the Special Investigating Unit and other law enforcement agencies.
Mchunu said the ugliest of reports has something to do with irregularities with the War-on-Leaks initiative that has since been derailed.
“At the conception at a high level, it was not really a bad idea, but I think when they started the first step to realise the idea, they got it all wrong,” he said.
“We are now at a stage where we closed this project last year. It is more receiving funding, and it does not exist except as part of work we do with municipalities,” the minister said.
Mchunu said external investigations into the department made it look like a police station in terms of dockets containing investigations.
“We derive a lot of ugliness from Lepelle and so on. Secondly, there that being handled by SAPS a few of those but a bulk is with the SIU,” he said, adding that the investigation were at different level of completion.
Mchunu said they were troubled by the unauthorised, wasteful and fruitless expenditure and irregular expenditure.
He also said the head of department and the chief financial officer were appointed in January and February respectively at a time there was major concern on the types of improper expenditure.
Mchunu noted that there were acting persons in top positions, a move that created problems of its own.
“We have now fully appointed people. Full accounting should be the order of the day on these aspects of accountability and in terms of audit outcomes will be overcome as we move on,” he said.
In his report to the committee, Chief Financial Officer Frans Moatshe said the financial health of the department was challenged by high incidents of improper expenditure, the existence of fraud and corruption and poor financial management.
“Considering the above challenges, there is an inherent impediment to effective service delivery across the entire water value chain.
“The department has developed and is currently implementing a turnaround and financial recovery plan,” Moatshe said.
His report showed that while no unauthorised expenditure was incurred in 2021/22, the amount stood at R17.8 billion for irregular expenditure.
The report showed that condonation was in progress for R10bn, investigation concluded in R1bn irregular expenditure, and R6.7bn was the amount under investigations.
The report said the irregular expenditure related mainly to prior periods contractual obligations such as the private security services and cleaning services contracts with carry-through effect on current running contracts. “Included in the irregular expenditure are the incidents submitted to the National Treasury for condonation consideration. Investigations are being accelerated to enable finalisation in the 2021/22 financial year,” reads the report.
Political Bureau