Sita set to unveil extent of graft

THE State Information Technology Agency (Sita) will release two forensic reports at the end of the month that will lift the lid on the extent of corruption within the entity.

This followed its meeting with the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) in Parliament yesterday where Scopa asked about deviations and expansions of contracts worth tens of millions of rand.

In one transaction Sita deviated on a tender worth R1.9 billion. In another it sought deviation from the National Treasury for a tender for R416 million, and in another incident the tender was R512m. The National Treasury refused to deviate on some of the tenders.

Sita also told Scopa that it was cleaning up its act after it found some of its staff were involved in corruption, and departments were coming up with “cooked” tenders that required approval.

The agency also told members of the committee it had seized 80 laptops from its supply chain management division during the investigations. When the forensic investigation was undertaken by two firms, 50% of the staff at the supply chain management division either resigned or were fired.

Sita chief financial officer Rudzani Rasikhinya said they wanted to clean up the agency.

“Within Sita there has been a lack of consequential management for a long time. We have started to do that. We need to punish people for the wrong things they have done,” said Rasikhinya.

Sita chairman Zukile Nomvete said they had started to deal with people in procurement. He said there had been poor contractual management at the agency.

He said there was a conflict of interest between some officials and suppliers. Others had left the organisation and some were facing criminal investigations.

The forensic reports from the firms would identify the exact details of what had happened with some of the tenders, said Nomvete.

Scopa chairman Themba Godi said they did not want people involved in corruption at Sita to get a slap on the wrist.

He said they had been concerned by the use of deviations and expansions by departments and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

He said this was used to enable corruption because no tenders were put out in public for competitive bidding.

“We want to persuade departments and entities to avoid abuse,” said Godi, adding that at one major SOE a tender was extended 13 times.

He said the amounts involved in deviations and expansions were huge, and amounted to hundreds of millions of rand.