No hope soon of toilet tender probe
PUBLIC protector Thuli Madonsela’s probe into the Eastern Cape toilet scandal could take four years due to a lack of resources.
Speaking to Times Media at the University of Fort Hare (UFH) yesterday, Madonsela revealed that her office was hamstrung and needed to hire extra personnel to look into the investigation.
She was invited by the UFH Law Students’ Council to address students ahead of midyear exams starting next week.
Madonsela said her office had not begun the investigation into the R631-million contract that was awarded by the Amathole District Municipality to the Siyenza Group.
The public protector was approached by the provincial EFF and national DA leaderships to look into the contract.
Madonsela said she did not know when her office would be ready to start the probe because it had a backlog of 160 cases older than a year.
She said she was unable to employ permanent staff and it was not possible to hire contract investigators even for a year or two to get rid of the backlog.
Madonsela said the government had been debating and asking questions on whether her office was probing cases it was supposed to do.
She found this strange as the constitution afforded her powers and a discretion to decide what cases to investigate.
“If I were given money then to just hire contract workers for a year or two, we could get rid of the backlog. It is sad because some of these things you want to investigate immediately and make findings.”
She said if an investigation took four years, it might not solve the problem and becomes an academic answer to solve future problems.
Madonsela said her office had almost concluded the probe into the alleged misuse of millions of rands meant for preparations of the memorial services and funeral of Nelson Mandela.
There was only one outstanding interview with an official. “He is one person who requested to see us because initially we wanted a written response from him before we needed to see him.”
She said the report was likely to be finalised between next month and July.
Her office would send notices to affected individuals to get their input before the report was made public.