Doing business with state warnings fall on deaf ears

THE Health Department in Gauteng has the highest number of officials doing business with government in the province – despite repeated warnings from the Public Service Commission (PSC).

This was revealed by the Gauteng Finance MEC, Barbara Creecy, in her written replies to questions asked by the DA’s Kingsol Chabalala in the provincial legislature.

Chabalala had asked Creecy about the state of the province after it was revealed in Parliament that there were more than 2 704 state employees actively doing business with national and provincial government departments during the period April 1, 2017, to January 31, 2018, to the tune of R8 billion.

Chabalala initially asked the question of Gauteng Premier David Makhura, but Creecy responded.

She gave a breakdown of all Gauteng government departments and said that in total 148 employees were doing business with government in the province.

Creecy revealed that the Gauteng health department had a total number of 70 employees, with the second highest being the education department, with 48 employees.

Both these departments receive the largest slices of the budget allocation from the Gauteng government.

The Department of Infrastructure Development has 7; Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation 6; Agriculture and Rural Development 4, while the Department of Human Settlements and e-Government have 3 each.

Provincial Treasury and Roads and Transport have 2 each, while Community Safety; Co-operative Governance and Traditional and Economic Development have one each.

Creecy said the involvement of some of these officials was analysed to determine what could have led to them doing business with government.

“Some employees are appointed as Audit Committee members, and/ or members of boards, or participate in professional bodies. Within the Gauteng health department, some employees are linked to private hospitals, which could possibly be classified as remunerative work outside of the public service,” Creecy said.

She emphasised that for government employees who served on audit committee and professional bodies, that did not constitute “conducting business with an organ of state”.

“There could be valid instances where employees conducted business with government, and in such cases the head of department must initiate an investigation into the contravention for the purpose of a disciplinary inquiry,” Creecy said.

However, she added that Makhura had already written to several provincial government departments for responses on the status of affected officials.

In his reaction, Chabalala said: “It is high time that government implements a transparent tender system that promotes fair access to tenders for all Gauteng businesses”.

Yesterday, Creecy, delivering her Provincial Treasury annual report in the legislature, said the provincial government Open Tender system had been one of the greatest interventions by the current administration to fight fraud and corruption and eliminate irregular spending.

“Since 2014, the value of contracts awarded through public adjudication because of Open Tender was more than R18bn. In 2017/18, this system detected non-compliance matters in 26 tenders before award.

“In cancelling these procurement processes, we managed to save government a total of R1.2bn in irregular expenditure,” she said.