Johannesburg - Gauteng Premier David Makhura has pledged to intensify the fight against corruption and fraud in key provincial government departments, including education and roads and transport.
On Thursday Makhura publicly acknowledged that fraud and corruption were ravaging at least five of his departments. Some of these departments, like education, roads and transport, and infrastructure were given a huge chunk of the provincial government’s budget.
Makhura listed these departments while delivering his budget speech in the legislature on Thursday when he tabled plans to eradicate the scourge eating away at the public purse. Health was not listed as one of the corrupt departments.
“We are strengthening capacity to investigate and prevent acts of corruption, particularly in departments that have a track record of high incidents of corruption in our province.”
He listed “the departments of roads and transport, infrastructure development, human settlements and community safety as well as school governing bodies (SGBs) in terms of education and economic development with regard to bribery”.
He added that an open tender system would be introduced in municipalities to help stem corruption in local government.
The premier said his office would, in terms of this “Gauteng city region anti-corruption strategy”, also ensure senior government officials made full financial-interest disclosures.
“Our anti-corruption operations will target departments and agencies that have high incidents of corruption – driving licence testing centres, SGBs, traffic, police officers and other government offices. We will also identify private sector companies that are prone to corruption,” he warned.
Makhura previously said his provincial executive committee had adopted a comprehensive Gauteng governance and administration roadmap “to clean up the administration of all fraudsters and build a high-performance team of civil servants, which is a catalyst for the realisation of the Gauteng city region vision and TMR (targeted socio-economic research) programme.
He added: “We are determined to build a highly motivated team of administrators who are accountable and empowered to play and fulfil their role without political interference.
“This roadmap will help us to strengthen management capacity within all departments, modernise the public service and transform the state into a capable instrument of transformation, modernisation and re-industrialisation.”
The premier also vowed to intervene and assist poor-performing departments. “Over the past 12 months we have been hard at work to change the culture and image of these departments by insisting on a new performance culture and holding MECs and officials accountable…
We are already on the road to recovery.
“The Gauteng Health Department is now getting out of administration and there is a major improvement in its financial management and service delivery.”
Makhura added that the Infrastructure Development Department was meeting its targets, saying it had already spent 99 percent of its budget by the end of March this year.
“We are now turning our attention to building the capacity of the departments of human settlements and economic development so that they can deliver on their respective mandates. There is no time to waste.
“I realised that the Department of Economic Development does not have economists – it only has general managers,” the premier said.
An optimistic Makhura added: “I’m happy to say we in Gauteng are on the same page with regard to the future of our province. We sing from the same hymn sheet and read from the same script with regard to the future direction and vision for the new Gauteng city region.”
Makhura announced that his government would host an inaugural Gauteng infrastructure conference for investors next month.
The Star