‘Prasa probes must come to an end’
ONGOING probes into the embattled Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) need to come to an end as “they have been going on for too long”.
This was according to Transport Minister Joe Maswanganyi who attended a briefing yesterday on the performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the transport sector for the 2015/16 financial year.
Maswanganyi said numerous institutions were probing Prasa, including several private firms, Treasury, the Public Protector, the Special Investigating Unit and the Hawks.
Investigations by private companies cost R148 million that had to be categorised as irregular expenditure because they were not budgeted for. “We don’t want to incur unnecessary expenditure by paying private companies,” he said.
There would be no attempts to conceal wrongdoing at the rail agency, he said.
“There is no cover-up and no minister has interfered with investigations.”
He revealed Prasa achieved 45% of its pre-deter mined objectives in 2015/16, compared with 35% the previous year, only partially meeting 10% of its objectives during the 2015/16 financial year.
His department would establish strong institutional capacity to complement investigative work conducted by institutions to “combat all elements of criminality” within transport SOEs. He revealed: • The SA National Road Agency received an unqualified audit report from the attorney-general and attained 99% of its performance target;
• The Road Accident Fund obtained 90% of its targets and cut the number of outstanding claims to 217 182, despite a rise in unregistered claims;
• The Road Traffic Infringement Agency improved 81.3%, despite operational challenges in infringement revenue;
• The SA Civil Aviation Authority attained, for the second year in a row, 100% of the targets set for 2015/16;
• The Airports Company SA met 96% of its goals compared with 89% the previous year;
• The South African Maritime Safety Authority, Air Traffic and Navigation Services and Cross-Border Road Transport Agency came in over the 65% mark for their performance.
Maswanganyi said all SOEs would be expected to submit tur naround strategies. “All SOEs, including boards and executives, will be appropriately skilled in understanding the unique role they play. This will include board training, and executives’ training programmes will be developed to position them to fulfil their strategies. We’ve already advertised all the vacant positions in the boards of all entities, which are to be filled by July.”