Sexwale under fire for high spending on consultants

ANC MP Nomhle Dambuza has slammed Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale’s department for spending R91 million on consultants.

“You cannot appoint consultants for the sake of appointment,” she told the Cape Times yesterday.

Dambuza chairs the portfolio committee that oversees Sexwale’s department and said her committee found that R91m had been spent on consultants when it went through the finan- cial statements contained in the past financial year’s annual report.

“Our concern stems from the fact that there are projects or operations that appear to be departmental daily operations, but we found that the department opted to use consultants,” she said.

Dambuza said the committee was especially concerned with the use of consultants when the white paper on sanitation was drawn up.

She said this work was still outstanding.

The other instance the committee found was the department appointing a consultant to provide reports on the N2 Gateway Solar Water Heaters project, said Dambuza.

She said the project had a steering committee, comprising various stakeholders that were meant to update the department on the progress of the project and yet a consultant was used to compile the report from information they already had.

Dambuza and her committee met officials from the auditor-general and asked them to look into this spending before the end of next month.

They want to find out wether the department got value for money when they hired the consultants.

Dambuza said she wanted the department’s officials to report back to the committee on why they had spent millions of rands on consultants. She said the committee would question where the department would use consultants when it discussed its strategic plan for the coming financial year.