The Star reports that hundreds of public servants appear to have not heeded the instruction to stop doing business with the state.
In response to this contravention, the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) has handed 20 names of officials to police, and they could soon be arrested. The department passed regulations prohibiting public servants from doing any form of business with the state in 2016. The regulations were clear that public servants should not go into business with the state in their individual capacity or through companies of which they were directors. All government workers in that position were given until January 2017 to either resign from the public service or relinquish their business interests. But a list that The Star has seen showed that 721 employees of the Eastern Cape education department alone were still registered on the state’s central supplier database. The DPSA said it has been monitoring the database closely together with National Treasury, since the 2016 regulations. “The department is further interrogating the issue, and as more employees are identified their names will be handed to the police,” Vukani Mbhele, spokesperson for DPSA Minister Senzo Mchunu, indicated. A proclamation in April expanded the category of those banned from doing business with the state to include special advisers to ministers. It also declared contravention of the regulation to be a criminal offence.
- Read the full report by Bongani Nkosi, which originally appeared in The Star, at Security.co.za
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