IOL reports that members of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) were alarmed on Tuesday to learn that “cleaners” assist in processing claims in the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure.

ANC MP Bheki Hadebe asked the department’s Chief Financial Officer Lesetja Toona about the revelation when the department briefed the committee on what had led to irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure in the Property Management Trading Entity. Hadebe questioned Toona about using cleaners to process payments, stating that it was outside of their scope of work. “You have used them to do something other than what you employed them for,” he pointed out. Scopa chairperson Mkhuleko Hlengwa also intervened in the matter. Toona, however, asserted that cleaners were not processing payments: “They have never processed payments. We are not using cleaners. We now have full-time people that are processing payments.” Earlier, Minister Patricia de Lille said the main problem in her oversight role was that the department was resisting the introduction of information technology systems as it wished to continue working manually. This, she said, resulted in corruption within the department. “We have a lot of overpayments and underpayments in the department. We have now got to the bottom of what is causing the overpayments… who is pressing that button to overpay on a monthly basis. In terms of the delegations for the people who are pressing the buttons – doing the constant over expenditure – I discussed with the acting director-general that the way we are going to stop this is to remove the delegations from those people who must pay,” De Lille said.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tarryn-Leigh Solomons at IOL

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