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MBABANE – The Central Transport Administration (CTA) has come under fire after they captured that over 47 vehicles were damaged by accidents yet this was not the case.

This was during an update by the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office (DPMO) on recommendations made by the Auditor General (AG), Timothy Matsebula, who reported that the DPM’s Office incurred a sum of E553 295.39 in respect of costs for repairing accident-damaged vehicles but did not recover the money from the drivers as per the Financial Management and Accounting Procedures Manual. TheAG found that 52 vehicles were listed as having being damaged by car accidents. However, the controlling officer or Principal Secretary (PS) in the DPMO, Makhosini Mndawe, said during an investigation by the office, information they had gathered from the CTAwas that only five of the vehicles had been involved in accidents.

“We also received information from the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) that these were indeed the accidents which were reported. Only five out of the 52,” said Mndawe. He said the office was not aware as to where the difference of the five and 52 vehicles emanated from, as they were aware that these were their vehicles due to the registration plates and records they had. However, it was not clear as to what had happened to the 47 vehicles.

Check

“CTA has a responsibility to check its books. Some of these vehicles had been previously found to have been recorded as having windscreen problems and had been repeatedly captured as vehicles damaged by accidents,” the AG said.

The PAC Chairperson Gege Member of Parliament (MP), Musa Kunene, questioned the PS as to why they did not inform the auditor general of the issue with the vehicles on time, as this was costly to the government purse. Mangcongco MP Oneboy Zikalala said the controlling officer was basically telling them that the AG was lying about the 52 vehicles based on their own findings, and wondered why they had not informed the auditor general in due time as they were aware of the number of vehicles they had and could have received this information and shared it with the AG in time.

“I recall that we brought this matter to the PAC almost two years ago and this issue was deliberated upon. After the AG made these findings, he informed us that he found that there were 52 cars damaged due to accidents at the CTA. We are not saying the AG lied, but in our investigations we only found five,” he said. Mndawe said CTA should answer and explain as they were not aware that these vehicles had been in accidents.

CTA representative Sonnyboy Mabuza said they firstly apologised for not updating the PS on time pertaining this issue. He said with some of the vehicles they found that they captured them as accidents yet they had windscreen damages, which were not necessarily caused by accidents.

Nutshell

“So you find that some of these vehicles are repeated and counted as accidents yet the windscreen damage is not considered an accident and a person could not be surcharged due to this. In a nutshell, we cannot look into such issues with the ministries, when the auditors come and then we reconcile,” he said. PAC Chairperson Kunene said the CTA response was not satisfactory for the magnitude of the issue at hand. “We assume there are experts at CTA, therefore that is your error, to capture the accidents wrongly and CTA is clearly the problem and this had been evident in the past. The issues are immense such that it is possible that you cannot share how many vehicles are being fixed at the different garages nationwide,” said Kunene. “You are the common denominator in most problems in the ministries,” said Kunene. He said they were the ones who did not work collaboratively and efficiently with auditor general, hence the mistake noted in the 52 vehicles.

Pure Voices Standard Bank Choral Music champions

MATSAPHA – After much deliberation by the judges as the competition was tough, Pure Voices were crowned the Standard Bank Choral Music Competition champions last night.

His Majesty’s Correctional Services came second, while Manzini Choir came third during the competition held at Esibayeni Lodge, Matsapha.