Decentralise upkeep of state buildings to stop the rot — DA
The DA is calling for the maintenance of government buildings to be allocated to the various line departments rather than being housed under the department of public works and infrastructure.
Public works & infrastructure minister Sihle Zikalala noted in an engagement with the Western Cape property sector in Cape Town in November that the immovable asset portfolio under the custodianship of the department comprised about 30,000 land parcels or 4.7-million hectares of land on which roughly 90,000 facilities (equivalent to 33.9-million square metres of floor space) were located.
DA spokesperson on public works & infrastructure Sello Seitlholo said the number of cases of key state buildings falling apart due to poor maintenance by the department was escalating “to a point where it is now clear that the department of public works and infrastructure has failed [in] its mandate as the custodian of the government’s immovable assets”.
One example of a dilapidated building, he said, was the inhospitable Telkom Towers that houses the SAPS headquarters.
Last week Business Day reported the SAPS as saying it was making arrangements for “alternative premises” to house staff who had to be evacuated from its national head office in Pretoria, after the building was “declared unfit for human use”.
The building was evacuated after an inspection by Solidarity’s occupational health and safety division and an inspector from the department of employment & labour.
“Based on this gross dereliction of duty, the DA is calling for a full review of the department of public works and infrastructure’s mandate with a view to giving line departments the authority to manage their own buildings. Failure to decentralise this function will result in unnecessary loss of money as line departments look for alternative offices to work in,” Seitlholo said.
He noted that the auditorgeneral had long warned the department’s Property Management Trading Entity (PMTE), which acts as the custodian of the government’s immovable assets, was undermining service delivery due to poor management of state properties.
According to Seitlholo, the auditor-general had cited the continued waste of taxpayers’ money on refurbishment and construction projects for buildings that were unsuitable for human habitation, as one of the reasons the PMTE was failing on its mandate.
“Nowhere is this dysfunction more pronounced than the SAPS headquarters at Telkom Towers where it is reported that close to R1bn has reportedly been spent renovating the building against a purchase price of R700m for the building in 2015. Even after spending this inordinate amount of money on renovations, the Telkom Towers building is likely going to be evacuated due to its growing structural challenges.”
Seitlholo said the announcement by Zikalala that his department would launch an internal investigation into the mismanagement of the Telkom Towers complex was just a “poor attempt to cover up PMTE’s gross incompetence in the management of state immovable assets. The state of the Telkom Towers is not a new issue as it was flagged by the auditor-general in 2021 and was flagged again last week as a material irregularity. Aside from the fact that money has been spent on the buildings, the department of public works and infrastructure is still paying rent for SAPS at a number of properties that should have been vacated years ago had SAPS taken occupation of Telkom Towers.”
Seitlholo said it did not inspire confidence that PMTE, with its growing asset management crisis, was responsible for overseeing the maintenance of buildings for the departments of health, defence, home affairs, higher education, and justice, among others.
“Failure to take immediate action to decentralise the management of government buildings to line departments risks collapsing state capacity and compounding the already dire service delivery challenges across the government system.”
Zikalala said in November that his department was exploring various strategies to improve the management of its assets.
THE SAP’S NATIONAL HEAD OFFICE BUILDING IN PRETORIA WAS ‘DECLARED UNFIT FOR HUMAN USE’