Unprepared nuke officials shown door

Durban - The Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) was shown the door in Parliament on Thursday after its top officials showed up at the energy committee without their annual report.

Necsa’s failure to produce an annual report, including audited financial statements, potentially has opened the door for the energy committee to recommend it should not receive its budgetary allocation for the current financial year.

Such a recommendation would send a politically-strong signal. It may feature in the committee’s budget review and recommendation report – a statutory requirement as part of Parliament’s role of oversight over the Budget. These reports must be ready before next Wednesday’s medium-term budget policy statement by the finance minister.

DA MP Gordon Mackay said it was “unprecedented” and “unacceptable” that Necsa failed in its statutory duty to produce a valid set of financials and the 2014/15 annual report.

According to the Public Finance Management Act, departments and their entities must table annual reports and financial statements by September 30 every year.

Earlier this month, Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson told National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete Necsa would miss the deadline, as its financial statements were not yet ready.

Necsa has been in turbulent waters since February, when news of its financial troubles and leadership tussles first emerged. Necsa is set to play a leading role in South Africa’s controversial proposed nuclear build programme, as Eskom has recused itself due to capacity constraints.

This week it was confirmed the Energy Department had missed its self-set September 30 deadline to start the nuclear procurement process. However, the department said it remained “confident” it would announce a nuclear strategic partner in time for the end of the financial year deadline of March 31, 2016.

Necsa drives nuclear research and development and oversees the processing of nuclear material, including medical isotopes, at its SAFARI-1 nuclear research reactor at Pelindaba outside Pretoria.

In March, President Jacob Zuma and Joemat-Pettersson visited the site; Zuma later addressed a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the site.

After Thursday’s committee meeting, Necsa chairman Mochubela Seekoe said the team had come to Cape Town on Parliament’s invitation, but did not say why the entity did not tell MPs there was no annual report.

Earlier, the committee said there had to be a forensic audit of PetroSA, which recorded a record R14.5 billion loss in the past 2014/15 financial year.

ANC MP Tandi Mahambehlala criticised the petroleum entity’s officials for trying to explain away the impairment, notched up amid board instability. “You can’t sit here and justify an irregular expenditure of R14.5bn. It’s not justifiable,” she said.

It has been a tough week for senior energy officials in Parliament this week, who received a dressing down for not reporting on their entities’ financial woes and instead repeating stale information in response to MPs’ questions. It was a rare cross-party political lines show of unity by MPs.

On Wednesday, Energy committee chairman Fikile Majola emphasised the department had to address its lack of “strategic capacity” to oversee entities Necsa and PetroSA.

Daily News

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