Speaker pressured to hand over report

THE DA is pushing National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete to hand over a report on an investigation into Secretary to Parliament Gengezi Mgidlana to members of the institution’s joint standing committee on financial management.

Yesterday the party’s chief whip, John Steenhuisen, wrote to Mbete demanding that each member of the standing committee immediately be provided with a copy of the report, to be treated as confidential.

This came after the DA’s failed bid to get the report last week.

It has emerged that only the co-chairman, Vincent Smith, has had access to the report.

“The fact that only one member received a copy of the audit committee’s report is wholly inappropriate and fatally irregular as it undermines parliamentary procedure on handling documents considered confidential,” Steenhuisen wrote.

He charged that it was inappropriate that Smith and the ANC were placed at an unfair advantage over other committee members by having had sight of this report.

“It is manifest that there is a legal duty to provide the audit committee report on Mr Mgidlana to all of the members of the joint standing committee so that they can effectively execute their oversight responsibilities.

“We look forward to studying the findings of the Audit Committee report and taking decisive action,” he wrote.

Parliament could not immediately be reached for comment.