Civil servants mask private income

MORE than 700 senior government managers have landed in hot water for failing to declare their business interests and directorships in many private and public companies.

The Public Service Commission (PSC) yesterday said an investigation had found that 721 public servants failed to disclose that they were directors of various companies possibly doing business with the state.

The PSC wants President Cyril Ramaphosa and the provincial premiers to act against these officials.

PSC commissioner Mike Seloane said their findings covered the period between January and March this year.

Seloane said the PSC had scrutinised all the received financial disclosure forms of senior managers and conducted its own investigations to determine whether their disclosures were truthful.

“The scrutiny of the financial disclosure forms revealed that a total of 721 members in both national and provincial departments did not disclose their directorships in private and public companies.

“This is in contravention of regulation 19 of the Public Service Regulation, 2016,” Seloane said.

According to the PSC, 1 943 senior managers in national and provincial departments had directorships of private and public companies.

“National departments have a total number of 485 (43%) senior managers who did not disclose their directorships, and 236 senior managers are in the provinces,” Seloane said.

Gauteng had the highest number of 77 (36%) of senior managers and Mpumalanga the lowest, with four senior managers who did not disclose their directorships.

The total number of senior managers doing remunerative work in national departments was 183, and only 72 had written approval – 19 of them are deputy directors-general and two directors-general, while 38 are chief directors and 124 directors. All of them, including those with written approval, cumulatively earned over R16 million.

Of all nine provinces, the Western Cape had the highest number of directorsgeneral doing remunerative work. According to the PSC, of the 49 officials found to do remunerative work, 24 were directors-general, three deputy directors-general, five chief directors and 17 directors. Written approvals were given to only 22 officials. They earned over R1.7m.

North West had 14 officials doing remunerative work and none had written approval. Three of the officials were directors-general, two deputy directors-general, three chief directors and six directors, and they collectively earned over R2.2m.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the PSC found that 22 officials were doing remunerative work.