Johannesburg - The back-to-back announcements of government probes into the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) and the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services are unlikely to bring stability to each of the troubled entities soon.
The reason for this is that they are merely a stop-gap measure to deflect criticism rather than holding anyone accountable.
ANC leaders, who spoke on condition of anonymity yesterday, blamed the government for the paralysis in key state departments and parastatals, charging that they should have dealt with the problems a long time ago.
Yesterday, the department announced that it would put its director-general Rosey Sekese on special leave unless she provided it with reasons why she should not be suspended pending an investigation into her running of the affairs of the department.
“We have always known that Sekese had run the department as her personal fiefdom but the minister (Siyabonga Cwele) failed to act on her,” said the ANC leader.
“Some of the people concerned even wrote to the president to appraise him of the situation but nothing happened. If you have such a key institution not functioning as it should then you should look at the political leadership. It is the same situation with Prasa that you let things get out of control before you act. Things do not work that way.”
The unprecedented move, which also involved the Public Services Commission, came just hours after Transport Minister Dipuo Peters announced that she had called on the auditor-general to conduct a forensic probe into alleged fraud and tender irregularities at Prasa.
Lack of political will
Another said state institutions were left to collapse because of the lack of political will to sort them out. He said the government knew what the problems facing its departments and parastatals were and should act decisively to ensure that they were contained.
He said: “These investigations are a waste of time because they are going to tell us what we already know. With Prasa you have a problem of lack of a clear delegation of duties between the board and the executive. In telecommunications and postal services you have a director-general that people have always complained about and nothing was done.
“In both instances, the ministers should have acted as soon as they got the information.”
On Sunday, Peters said she had asked the auditor-general to look into alleged violations of the Public Finance Management Act and other related statutes regarding contracts, engagement of service providers, and payments to service providers, including but not limited to, issues that had received wide media coverage recently.
But another leader said the investigations were deflecting attention from real issues that had plagued some departments and state-owned enterprises at the time when they were supposed to be the key drivers of economic growth.
The DA yesterday said the department had collapsed following the dismissals of the head of international affairs Gift Buthelezi, information and communication technology policy chief Themba Phiri and administration boss Sam Vilakazi, who resigned last week.
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