Cape Town - Members of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts have called on the presidency to act swiftly on corruption after reports of the Special Investigating Unit have been lying in the presidency for months with no action.
Scopa members said on Wednesday the investigations that were concluded last November, but more than a year later there were no consequences.
Scopa chairperson Mkhuleko Hlengwa said they were unhappy that after 13 months the presidency has not acted on the SIU reports.
Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, said they were attending to the matter.
He said he would be meeting with officials from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office on the SIU reports.
He said he has also engaged with the SIU on these reports.
“The point I am here to make, honourable members, is that these reports you are speaking about are usually dealt with by the President's office. Whatever we have to deal with as the presidency, it is when it has been referred by the president to us. A number of times, the president would have referred the report to an affected department.
“It becomes important that, therefore, which I want to accept after discussing with the chairperson (Hlengwa) that maybe us as the presidency, we were supposed to have taken proactive steps with the team of the president to actually have a sense because we have got a duty to communicate and a duty to inform society,” said Gungubele.
He said they should not have waited on this matter.
Gungubele also told members of the committee that he wanted to engage the office of the president on how this matter was going to be dealt with.
“Based on that, as we sit now, we understand what the president is dealing with as preliminary progress reports whether sections and phrases are implemented in the bigger scheme of things. I say this because, at some stage, I engaged with the SIU, who gave me an idea that the final report will be around December.
At that point, one had hoped we would be privy to that. The undertaking I made to the chair, which I make to the portfolio committee if the committee so indulged, is that I be allowed today to engage the office of the president and be advised how this matter is going to be dealt with because once it is out of the office of the president, it is under my watch,” said Gungubele.
But members of the committee had none of it and said they wanted answers on these SIU reports.
Bheki Hadebe of the ANC said they were concerned about the slow pace of implementation of action on cases that have been concluded by the SIU.
He said they were told in July this year that contracts that were under investigation by the SIU were more than 2 600.
Out of the 2 600 cases, a total of 1 068 have been finalised, said Hadebe.
He said, as members of the committee, they expected there would be action on the finalised cases and sanctions imposed on the culprits.
Hadebe said it had been 13 months since they have been waiting for action on the cases that have been concluded.
Ntombovuyo Mente of the EFF said they were disappointed that there has been a lack of action on the finalised cases.
She told Gungubele that his office would be held accountable for not acting on the SIU reports. She said it had been 13 months, and there was no action against those implicated in the reports.
Hlengwa said Gungubele would return to the committee early next year to give an update on the cases.
He added that they wanted prosecution on these cases because there was corruption involved.
POLITICAL BUREAU