No clear answers on water project

EXASPERATED MPs have told Water Affairs Minister Nomvula Mokonyane and her top officials that they are seemingly unable to give a straight-forward account of how they are addressing the findings that the cost of the Gijani water project in Limpopo escalated fivefold without proper tenders.

She responded yesterday to detailed questions from Parliament’s watchdog Standing Committee on Public Accounts by saying she often found herself blamed for the failure of local municipalities to ensure communities had access to running water and that this was to some extent also the case in Giyani.

Mokonyane stressed that the start of the project predated her tenure and implied that the fact that it started as an emergency intervention had added to problems.

“It is a good example of the complexities of water infrastructure and how our financing can allow abuse. We have delivered water to more than 40 villages, but to accounting it is as if we have done something wrong.”

She added that she was engaging the Auditor General regarding his finding of misspending of R249 million.

DA MP Tim Breuteseth demanded to know how many people the department had fired in response to corruption in the Gijani project and accused her of giving the committee information dating from May.

“We have zero dismissals,” he concluded.

The IFP’s Mkhuleko Hlengwa said he believed the meeting should be postponed until the department was ready to come back with fresh data after it struggled to explain how the number of written warnings issued to officials stood at 34, when earlier it had reported 107.

MPs pointed out that written warnings could not be retracted and Breuteseth told the minister: “It is this level of confusion that puts your department where it is.”

Hlengwa added that the department was giving “generic, blanket, one-size-fits-all answers”.

The department said it was having some success in recovering money where contractors had been paid several times for the same service, notably Randwater, which received a “duplicate” payment of R33m, though it was not sure whether that in fact applied to another R18m paid to the same company and might have to withdraw this claim. – ANA