Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale says he will request the Special Investigating Unit to probe the “stink” of corruption and financial irregularities found by the special ministerial sanitation task team.
He was in Parliament to present the task team report, which has been embargoed until it is tabled at next week’s cabinet meeting, after many delays and the failure of its chairwoman, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, to present the report.
Madikizela-Mandela was again absent from yesterday’s meeting.
Sexwale said the report had revealed “sloppy work by people who should have known better”.
“It is clear there have been some people who have taken advantage of this government, some people who thought we were an ATM just to corrupt,” he said. “They are stealing from the poor.”
Speaking to journalists later, Sexwale said the department had consistently taken action against its own officials, including sacking the head of the unit responsible for distributing houses last year.
He said a presidential proclamation first gazetted in 2005 empowered the SIU to investigate and recommend prosecutions relating to housing, resulting in widespread interference by provincial and municipal employees who had rigged processes relating to the allocation of RDP houses.
This proclamation was expanded in 2009 to also include investigations into contractors for the department, as well as units which fell under its jurisdiction such as the National Homebuilders Regulatory Council.
Complicating monitoring and evaluation of the roll-out of housing and sanitation is the disbursement of funds to provinces and municipalities, and the co-ordination of these efforts with the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
Responsibility for the roll-out of sanitation was also moved from the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs to Human Settlements in 2009, and further infrastructure development takes place through the presidential infrastructure co-ordinating commission, headed by Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel.
Sexwale emphasised yesterday that Patel and Rural and Land Affairs Minister Gugile Nkwinti were committed to sanitation and housing backlogs, saying a rural infrastructure “masterplan” was set to be unveiled in November.
The sanitation task team report sets out once again the country’s enormous sanitation backlogs, including a ratio of one toilet for every 10 households in Gauteng and how the Popo Molefe settlement in the North West has 1000 residents sharing only six mobile toilets, cleaned only twice a week.
In the Western Cape, there is only one toilet for every 100 households, the report says.
MPs endorsed the decision to bring in the SIU, unanimously enjoining the minister to act decisively.
The task team report has, however, been criticised as being scant on details on how the department intends acting on backlogs, with DA spokesman on human settlements Stevens Mokgalapa saying yesterday it was “quite sad” that the much-delayed report had not even been seen by MPs yet.
He said the information on the backlogs was not new, and so committee members wanted to see “what the department is going to do and when”.
The task team was established in September last year after the sagas around open toilets in the Western Cape, Free State and Mpumalanga. -Saturday Star