The Democratic Alliance (DA) in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) will proceed with a Public Access to Information Application (PAIA) following the ongoing failure by the Office of the Premier (OTP) to provide critical information to the province’s corruption Ad Hoc Committee.
The committee, appointed to investigate corruption within the province last year, is well into its investigation involving potential mismanagement within all provincial departments. Yet this office continues to ignore requests for additional information relating to the committee’s work.
The OTP has become a major stumbling block for the KwaZulu-Natal Ad Hoc Committee.
It cannot be that the office of the political head of the province – who was part of the adoption and mandate afforded to this committee – refuses to respond to pertinent questions relating to corruption.
Even more concerning to the DA is that all provincial forensic investigations have been moved from Provincial Treasury to the OTP. One particular forensic investigation under question is the probe undertaken by Treasury, which deals with irregular expenditure of more than R25 million by Treasury in the implementation of the e-procurement tool.
This report was sent to Premier Sihle Zikalala in 2019. Yet, to date, his Office has refused to respond to questions by the Ad Hoc committee or to release the forensic report, which has now been under lock and key for two years.
A further concern is that no disciplinary action has been taken against the former Head of Department of Provincial Treasury. In fact, he has now been appointed as accounting authority within KZN Ezemvelo Wildlife (EKZNW) – a move which can only be described as highly irregular.
The DA will submit a PAIA application within the next few days. The Premier cannot just talk about consequence management and ending fraud and corruption in the province, but selectively decide which cases should be prioritized and further ignore requests from the Ad Hoc Committee for information.