A SENIOR NATIONAL DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH OFFICIAL APPEARS IN COURT
A senior National Department of Health (NDoH) employee, Joseph Themba Popo Maja (63), was granted bail of R5000 by the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court. He is facing charges of two counts of corruption worth R15 000, a schedule 1 offence.
Maja is employed as a Cluster Manager: Communications at the National Department of Health. It is alleged that in 2019, Maja was appointed as a member of the Bid Specification and Bid Evaluation Committee. The committee was tasked to appoint a service provider to provide communication services in relation to the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill.
It is alleged that on 01 November 2019 the Bid Evaluation Committee members set to evaluate bidders for functional and technical evaluation after Digital Vibes was recommended to be contracted the bid amount of over R141 million, for a period of 12 months. The same day the committee sat, it is alleged that an amount of R10 000 was paid into Maja’s personal bank account, from the Digital Vibes bank account. A month later on 05 December 2019 an amount of R 5000 was paid again to his personal account by Digital Vibes.
The prosecutor, Phumla Dwane-Alpman, did not oppose bail in the matter. However, she asked the court to set an amount of R10 000 bail with conditions that Maja should hand in his private and official passport to the investigating offer, that he should inform the investigating offer when travelling outside Gauteng and should not interfere with state witnesses. However, his attorney told the court that Maja was already demoted at work in relation to the same matter and can only afford R5000. He also told the court that Maja has been cooperating with the state since the inception of the matter, therefore he was not a flight risk.
The matter was postponed to 19 July 2023 for disclosure of contents of the docket.
