‘Declare former Prasa boards delinquent’
Scopa seeks to prevent members from being appointed to any other board of directors in future
THE standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) has set its sights on having former interim and previous Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa’s (Prasa) board members declared delinquent directors.
This is to prevent their appointment to any other board of directors in future.
The committee came to this decision yesterday after it was informed by Prasa that the previous interim board prevented management from operating to its full capacity, particularly when it came to risk and financial management.
“The committee will begin a process of a fully-fledged parliamentary inquiry in an effort to gather facts that will assist in establishing when these problems started at Prasa as it doesn’t believe that they started with the former interim board,” said Scopa chairperson Mkhuleko Hlengwa.
He said the committee wanted to conduct an age analysis that would also include scrutinising the past reports of the Auditor-General and Prasa management reports to determine the origin of the challenges faced by the agency. “This is to ensure that all the previous Prasa boards are held accountable,” said Hlengwa.
Scopa expressed satisfaction with plans by new Prasa administrator Bongisizwe Mpondo and the commitment by Transport Minister
Fikile Mbalula on this process.
Mbalula said the decision to place Prasa under administration was not an easy one.
“We could have taken an easy path, but this place is broken. The management is non-functioning,” Mbalula said.
He described the entity as “rotten to the core”, saying bold steps had to be taken to turn things around.
“The business of Prasa is very important, and we can’t take our foot off the pedal. We understood quite succinctly the challenges that we are faced with, which require decisive action.”
It also emerged that the department was slapped with court papers challenging the appointment of Mpondo.
The news was relayed by Hlengwa and in response, Mbalula stated he was unaware of the development, but vowed to oppose the court action.
Speaking at the meeting, Mpondo said: “We are faced with the reality that Prasa is a broken business. This has happened over time.”
Mpondo noted that problems at the entity affected leadership and governance. He also said the failure to appoint a chief executive was by design, key to the challenges at the entity. It was also “a fertile ground for nonperformance”.
Mpondo told MPs about moves to realign the executive management and setting up sub-committees at executive level as well as streamline their activities to the mandate given by Mbalula.
“There are quite a lot of vacancies and strengthening of the office of administrator.”