By Alicia Mmashakana
Three years have passed since whistleblower Babita Deokaran, a senior manager in the Gauteng Health Department, died in a hail of bullets outside her home in Winchester Hills, Johannesburg.
Deokaran was working on an investigation into a Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) tender irregularities worth R332 million during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she was murdered and she was also one of several witnesses assisting the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) in its probe.
However, Deokaran’s efforts were not vain. On Thursday the SIU reported that they have expanded the scope of their probe, to include 5,500 transactions worth up to R3 billion.
The amount represents a 250% increase over the R850 million in possibly fraudulent transactions Deokaran had flagged and reported three weeks before her death.
Head of the Special Investigating Unit, Andy Mothibi said: “The investigating team gave me an update about 5 314 purchase orders that were identified relating to more than 170 service providers. So what are we going to do? We are going to immediately go to the special tribunal and go after these service providers to make sure we recover the money.
“We have now uncovered that her evidence assisted us to come up with identification of instances where the officials were circumventing procurement and abusing quotation systems,” Mothibi said.
Mothibi said they will be working with the National Prosecuting Authority including the Hawks who are also investigating the matter.
“We will make sure we support them, so that all of these people are prosecuted and that everyone is held to account.”
On Thursday, DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health, Jack Bloom, said although six men have been jailed for Deokaran’s murder, it appears little is being done to find the mastermind in an investigation “marred by incompetence”.
“My view is that the cover-up continues at the department. If there was another Babita who tried to stop corruption, she would be silenced as well,” Bloom said.
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