Cape Times - The Western Cape’s education and health departments are among five at the centre of a personal protective equipment (PPE) procurement probe by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).
The investigations come amid efforts to root out corruption as called for by President Cyril Ramaphosa, and come days after the SIU obtained an interim court order freezing the bank accounts of 40 companies involved in suspect contracts to supply PPE to the Gauteng Department of Health during the Covid-19 pandemic.
SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago would not disclose the names of the five Western Cape companies, only saying: “We are going to report this to the president in the first week of next month. The Western Cape has five allegations (against) five companies.”
Premier Alan Winde said the SIU outlined the five investigations to Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts.
He said two were from the DA-led departments of education and health, two were into procurement in the ANC-run Matzikama and Laingsburg municipalities, and one was listed for the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
However, Winde said the Western Cape did not have a Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and they were waiting for clarity.
“We welcome the SIU’s investigation into procurement in all nine provinces, as well as at a local and national government level.
“As a province, we have implemented several precautionary measures to prevent possible corrupt activities with regards to procurement in the Western Cape and to mitigate any risks in our supply chains and ensure that public funds are spent correctly,” Winde said.
Good Party secretary-general Brett Herron said in the interests of transparency and to rebuild public confidence in the integrity of government, Winde should disclose which provincial procurements were under investigation by the SIU.
Following a search-and-seizure operation in the Matzikama Municipality earlier this month, the DA in the province called for swift investigation into allegations of irregularities. “Some of us have expressed outrage at Covid-19 procurement corruption happening elsewhere, but without any scrutiny of what is happening right here in our province and in our towns and cities,” said Herron.
ANC leader of the opposition in the legislature, Cameron Dugmore, called for the probe to be extended to all local municipalities.
“This should include not only procurement for PPE but also how each municipality spent resources on food parcels and how these were distributed. We must establish who actually benefited from the PPE procurement and whether fronting took place. The report provided by the provincial treasury does not provide names of directors or the shareholding of the companies that benefited,” he said.
Shadow MEC of Finance, Economic Development and Tourism, Nomi Nkondlo, said they were probing the entire report “and made observations of areas of concern and where there’s no full disclosure to consider the report as part of our oversight on public finances.”
The SIU continues to probe the more than 600 national Covid-19 contracts worth over R5 billion.
The Hawks have 23 dockets and will be making arrests this week.
Head of the Hawks, Lieutenant-General Godfrey Lebeya, said the arrests would come as early as tomorrow but he did not indicate how many people involved in Covid-19 corruption would be arrested.
According to the SA Revenue Service some of the companies that were awarded PPE contracts had never been involved in the PPE business before.
About 17 of the PPE tenders involved politically exposed persons and the value of the tenders was R1.2bn, said Sars.