Municipalities still stalling on Special Investigating Unit recommendations

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Two oversight committees in parliament heard on Tuesday that municipalities and government departments continued stalling on the implementation of recommendations and referrals made by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).

The standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) and the portfolio committee on cooperative governance and traditional affairs were also told that there were still myriad officials who were escaping consequence management for alleged graft and maladministration because they simply resigned or retired from their posts.

The minister in the presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, told Scopa that the implementation of SIU reports “is not going at the pace we would like”, adding that there were some dating as far back as 2001.

Ntshavheni was appearing before Scopa alongside the SIU head, Andy Mothibi. They were briefing the committee about the investigation reports submitted by the SIU.

The minister said that the majority of government organisations that had received SIU referrals (criminal, disciplinary, administrative) and recommendations said they had implemented these, but had not supplied any proof thereof, or proof of the outcomes of implementation.

As for officials retiring or resigning before disciplinary processes could be implemented, Ntshaveni said the issue had been taken up with the department of public service and administration, in its ongoing quest to “modernise and professionalise” the public sector.

Disciplinary hearings in the public sector lasting for anything from one to three years has long been a bone of contention among taxpayers, who continue footing the bills for the errant — and possibly corrupt — officials to sit at home while waiting for their hearings to take place.

Ntshaveni said the presidency was “following up” on how to deal with the dilemma, adding  that it formed part of the “action plans” the cabinet was addressing.

Two options have been touted as possible solutions, and Ntshaveni repeated on Tuesday that the veracity of each was being researched.   

The first option was exploring the legality of placing an errant official on suspension without paying a salary until that person had been found not guilty of an offence and returned to work. The second option, she said, was the possibility of shortening the period for the disciplinary process, and prescribing it according to the offence.

The public services and administration department “will need to assist us on that”, she said.

As for more frequent updates on SIU referrals, the minister said that given the magnitude of these, reports were only released on a quarterly basis. The SIU has made 173 referrals on local government matters since January 2021, according to its cooperative governance committee presentation on Tuesday. 

Referring again to the slow pace of public sector disciplinary action and the resignation or retirement of officials trying to escape this, Ntshaveni told Scopa that the presidency believed that the work done by the SIU “cannot just be reduced to a report that gets filed in some cabinet without any consequences, [with the implicated official] then free” to seek employment in another government department or municipality, or another province.

This was why a blacklist was drawn up enabling the government to “track” those it once employed — who had retired or resigned under a cloud, or who had been dismissed — with the intention being to keep them out of the public service.

The work done by the SIU, and the implementations of its referrals and recommendations, was important as a step in addressing corruption, said Ntshaveni, thus assisting to extract South Africa from the Financial Action Task Force grey list.

Although the recommendations made by the SIU are reviewable, they must be implemented once reviewed. But before they are reviewed, the expectation is that the recommendations will be implemented, said Mothibi. 

The SIU is owed R986 million by the state institutions it has investigated, Scopa chairman Mkhuleko Hlengwa told the committee.

At the same time as the Scopa meeting was taking place, SIU officials, the National Prosecuting Authority and Hawks were presenting to the cooperative governance committee, updating it about corruption cases in the local government sphere.

It was here that the SIU representatives echoed what Ntshaveni had said about a lack of consequence management. But the presentation, as far as recommendations went, also mirrored the shortcomings identified by the Auditor General of South Africa when these were presented the 2021-22 local government audit outcomes last month.

In its presentation on overall observations, the SIU told the cooperative governance committee that in the municipalities it investigated, there were inadequate skills, poor record keeping, employment irregularities, poor management, leadership instability, poor governance, poor business processes, weak financial and risk management, high turnover of key staff and a lack of consequence management.