‘Probe councils involved in graft’
Hawks told to bring perpetrators to book
INSTITUTIONS such as the Hawks that were mandated to investigate corruption and other crimes should be compelled to do their jobs, ANC MP Amos Masondo said yesterday.
“We must compel people to do what they are supposed to do. If need be, we must go the court route,” Masondo said.
He praised the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) board for taking the Hawks to court over delays in investigating multimillion-rand tenders that were irregularly awarded by the troubled state-owned entity.
Prasa recently lodged a case in the high court to have the elite unit ordered to conduct an investigation on the matters referred to it by the board.
At a briefing of the co-operative governance and traditional affairs committee by the Office of the Auditor-General, parliamentarians heard that there were inadequate consequences for poor performance and transgressions in municipalities.
In the 2015/16 financial year, R16.8 billion in irregular expenditure was incurred – up from the prior year’s R11.1bn.
Municipalities did not have sufficient mechanisms for reporting and investigating transgressions or possible fraud. A total of 73 municipalities had not established disciplinary boards, 53 were without corruption hotlines and 50 others had no policies for investigations.
The DA’s David Matsepe was particularly worried that 43 (28%) allegations of fraud and supply-chain mismanagement uncovered in 151 municipalities and recommended by the Auditor-General to be probed further were never investigated.
This was in the wake of 14 (9%) others not being investigated properly, while 26 (17%) probes had taken longer than three months.
Matsepe said there was a need to look at factors that made municipalities not perform to expectations.
“My thinking is that the powers that be in the provinces or nationally are actually stifling the efforts of auditors.
“They don’t give regard to recommendations given by auditors that there are instances to be investigated,” Matsepe said.
Masondo said it couldn’t be that every year the same complaints were made about the failure to probe allegations arising from audits in municipal- ities. “There should be a meaningful outcome. Cases must end at some point in court, so that wrongdoing is attended to and there are consequences.”
He also called for the naming and shaming of corrupt municipalities if graft was to be eradicated in the country.
“It will be useful to ensure as we talk (about corruption), we actually say ‘which are the most corrupt municipalities and entities in the country?’.
“If we do that, we focus and concentrate our minds on those,” he said, adding that talking about corruption in general terms should give way to mentioning specific cases.
“Some of these corruption cases can lead to isolating them and interventions, so that we can see on an ongoing basis they are attended to,” he said.
Business executive Alice Muller said there was a need to focus on and work towards increasing accountability.
“If we increase accountability, corruption will go down,” she said.
“If accountability is not in place or enforced, we are bound to see a spike in corruption,” Muller added.