EFF ALARMED BY EXCESSIVE BREACH OF PROCUREMENT REGULATIONS
BY PUBLIC WORKS, ROADS AND INFRASTRUCTURE DEPARTMENT IN
LIMPOPO AND ITS ENTITY RAL.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in Limpopo is alarmed by excessive and
continuous breach of procurement regulations by the Department of Public Works,
Roads and Infrastructure and its entity Roads Agency Limpopo (RAL), which resulted
in financial losses and ballooning irregular expenditure amounting to R2298.1 million
the 2021/22 financial year.
The presentation by the department and RAL on their 2021/2022 annual performance
report before the Portfolio Committee on Public Works, Roads and Infrastructure
today, the 20th of October 2022 painted a grim picture of poor performance and further
exposed the lack of political will to restore good governance.
The department bypassed national treasury regulations in awarding a tender for the
construction of D959 tar road in Makhado and incurred R11 693 310 in irregular
expenditure from the more than R40 million allocated budget. In just less than 12
months the road is not user friendly due to multiple potholes caused by the contractor
who did some shoddy workmanship and now it will cost tax payers more money to fix
the road.
The EFF strongly condemns the corrupt and fraudulent practices in the department
and calls for consequence management to be implemented against officials in the
department’s bid adjudication committee for their disregard of PFMA and compliance
with the supply chain management processes.
At this stage no one is held accountable even though there are numerous failures and
wrong doing, for example the department is failing to fill vacant posts (majority of
senior officials are in acting positions), achieve targets, coupled with lack of capacity,
which is badly affecting service delivery of roads and infrastructure in the province.
The Lemana College project and the Giyani to Phalaborwa road project failed to reach
their completion but additional costs continue to accrue while contractors come, collect
pay cheques and go, leaving the projects in a mess.
It is the ANC government that appoints incompetent bidders based on favouritism
despite declaring false information and also not complying with SARS regulations, but
they expect the bogus contractors to perform miracles and deliver the desired results.
In the period under review, RAL alone has incurred R1489 million in irregular
expenditure meanwhile the R9.5 million spent by the department on some projects
was fruitless and wasteful as per the Auditor General’s findings. The EFF notes with
dismay the unspent R517.248 million by RAL as a result of not meeting the annual
targets and procurement irregularities, further depriving our people of service delivery.
It is unfortunate that there are no prospects of the wasted money being recouped,
taking into consideration the delayed internal forensic investigations, clearly proving
that the poor residents of Limpopo are on their own as the modus operandi of the
ruling party to loot state funds continues unabated with no consequence management.
The EFF has long warned against the use of tenders, but our call fell on deaf ears.
The first step towards building state capacity is to abolish tenders, wherein job creation
and the quality of services will be improved thereof.
We call on the department to speedily implement the remedial action in areas of poor
performance and corruption by officials. The public purse must be protected through
transparency and accountability
