By Simon Nare
The Presidency has been hammered by the Standing Committee of Public Accounts on how it is handling recommendations by the Special Investigating Unit for prosecutions.
Scopa chairman and RISE Mzansi leader Songezo Zibi was utterly scathing in his attack on The Presidency, which appeared before the committee to account on the SIU recommendations.
He told officials on Wednesday that The Presidency had been doing shoddy work on recommendations since 2001.
Zibi lamented that The Presidency had not implemented a systematic approach on how it dealt with the SIU reports, saying that it could have done a lot more to stop corruption by public officials who were doing business with government.
He added that the investigations had presented an opportunity for a multi-faceted approach to stop the corruption and ensure that those who were responsible were held accountable.
“I would have expected to see something that says you know over the last 23 years we have found that these are the major types of transgressions that we see in the system,” the chairperson said on Wednesday.
He added that The Presidency needed to look at what measures needed to be taken to close loopholes.
“I am not getting a sense that The Presidency is looking at this in a systematic way in order to make systemic improvements. What are the flows in the system? How do these patterns arise?” asked Zibi.
Presidency chief operating officer Rory Gallocher admitted that the scope of The Presidency was narrow with regards to SIU recommendations, but submitted that the office had state capture recommendations instead.
Gallocher said that the scope of the state capture recommendations touched on the systemic pattern that was mentioned by the committee.
“In order for The Presidency to coordinate this over the whole of [government] and the whole of society, we have had to set up our own structures,” he said.
He admitted that there was lapse in vetting public officials entering the office, citing a lack of resources.
However, senior officials were always vetted.
In its presentation to the committee, The Presidency admitted that none of the 51 companies implicated in the SIU’s Covid-19 investigation had been restricted from doing business with the government.
The Covid-19 investigation is the biggest one ever carried out by the SIU.
However, The Presidency which received the final investigation report, said as of the end of last month, none of the companies implicated appeared on the database managed by the Treasury.
A total of 297 recommendations for disciplinary action related to Personal Protective Equipment procurement is being tracked by The Presidency.
More than 60% of these cases have now been finalised with guilty findings.
INSIDE POLITICS
