Secretary to Parliament Gengezi Mgidlana needs to explain the “outrageous” amounts of taxpayers’ money spent during a recent trip to Europe, the DA said on Sunday.
“Reports this morning (Sunday) indicate that the secretary of Parliament, Gengezi Mgidlana, and other senior officials spent an outrageous R2 million on a two-week ‘benchmarking exercise’ across Europe,” DA chief whip John Steenhuisen said.
“This is a disgusting appropriation of public funds and Mr Mgidlana and his office must account for it. I will request that the newly established joint standing committee on financial management of Parliament summon Mr Mgidlana and have him provide a full report on his office’s ‘Eurotrip’,” he said.
According to City Press, Mgidlana and his delegation spent R177 350 on just three nights of accommodation in London, and R65 000 on car rental across England and Scotland. The paper also suggested that procurement procedures were violated in the processes.
In July last year, Mgidlana admitted to the press that he had been using a Parliament vehicle fitted with blue lights to ferry his family around Cape Town – a vehicle that cost Parliament R10 800 to repair after a crash.
“Repeatedly Mr Mgidlana has proven himself to be more interested in widening his waistline and pockets than ensuring that Parliament responsibly executes its mandate,” Steenhuisen said.
Parliament was currently debating government budgets. Yet, under Mgidlana the institution refused to set an example for the departments and entities reporting to it.
This instance was just another in a questionable string that clearly illustrated that Parliament needed a standing committee to oversee its enormous budget.
The DA believed Parliament had a duty to combat corruption not create it and Mgidlana had to be held to account, Steenhuisen said. – African News Agency