Johannesburg - Senior Gauteng Community Safety Department officials have been declared serial abusers of their government-issued cellphones and office phone lines.
Community Safety head of department Mongezi Tshongweni and senior managers made the abuse disclosure during an appearance before the legislature’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) on Tuesday.
Tshongweni made the shocking revelation after it was pointed out that his department paid “a whopping” R1.8 million to a service provider of cellphones for last year alone.
EFF Scopa member Mgcini Tshwaku had queried the “whopping and excessive” amount paid to one service provider.
In his reply, Tshongweni admitted that the amount was high and explained that his departments’ field workers were abusing their phones and were probably using them for personal needs.
He also did not deny Tshwaku’s insinuation that the field workers were using their government cellphones to download pornography and to connect to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Tshongweni said at least 250 field workers were in possession of official cellphones in order to conduct oversight on community policing.
The reply prompted Tshwaku to advise Tshongweni to link their cellphone connection to their IT programme with the aim of reducing spending on cellphone.
The former EFF leader in Gauteng also said Tshongweni must scrutinise a sample of 30 cellphones and find out what the department employees were using their phones for.
“If you could monitor the cellphones of 30 of them and charged them for using it for their personal things, I bet you others will stop using it for their personal interests,” Tshwaku said.
Earlier, Tshongweni and his team had faced a barrage of questions about their failure to provide detailed information about their use of consultants.
DA Scopa member Glenda Steyn questioned the department’s spending of more than R300 000 for six legal firms to do the same thing - legal representation.
The firms were paid between R10 000 and R113 000, but the department failed to declare what services they offered.
The department also came under attack for irregular expenditure of more than R8.8m paid between March 2012 and October 2014 to a catering company serving traffic police recruits.
Scopa questioned the department’s decision to grant the catering company a month-to-month contract amounting to R800 000 each.
The committee heard that the contract was terminated and that the department was paying less now than the amount it spent on its previous contractor.
The department has until Tuesday to give further details of the consultants used and the amounts paid to them.
The intense questioning about the spending of taxpayers’ money followed media reports that Gauteng was the second biggest spender on consultants after KwaZulu-Natal.
A Sunday newspaper this week reported that KwaZulu-Natal had spent R5bn on consultants.
Gauteng was second after splurging R3.2bn.
Gauteng’s Scopa members were unanimous in their call that the unnecessary spending on consultants has to stop.
The Star