More than 1,000 Eastern Cape civil servants are under scrutiny after being red flagged for doing business with the state.
Finance MEC Oscar Mabuyane revealed this to the Daily Dispatch on Sunday, saying senior officials had written last month to all accounting officers in the implicated departments, including education and health.
This comes a day after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a plan to jack up government policy so that civil servants who continued with this malpractice, will face the music.
Addressing more than 80,000 people who attended the ANC’s 107th birthday celebrations at the Moses Mabhida stadium on Saturday, Ramaphosa said: “We want civil servants who are committed to serving the people of South Africa and not themselves.
“Don’t mix doing business with serving the people of our country. We are warning that there will be considerable consequences for those who do not comply.”
Last April former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene tabled the Public Procurement Report in parliament which revealed that about R8bn of the country’s total expenditure goes to businesses owned by state employees, despite regulations prohibiting public servants from doing business with the government.
The report stated that at least 2,000 government employees were doing business with the state. Mabuyane said the Bhisho government had already started investigating cases of about 1,000 civil servants who, according to records, were found to be doing business during the very same timeframe of Nene’s report.
Mabuyane said: “We know we have about 1,000 employees who are doing business with government. Some are medical doctors who are not full time employees of the state. The majority of them are at health and education. We are looking into this.”
He said the only way to bring back the dignity of the ANC was to commit to fighting corruption.
“We are negotiating that one. What we do not want is double dipping, wherein someone who has not even declared his or her interests, earns a salary and does business with the state. People want to have more than they earn.”
In his address, Ramaphosa said many of “our public servants are committed and dedicated professionals who perform their tasks faithfully.
“However, there are some whose indifference to the needs and concerns of citizens has led to a deterioration in the quality of services and assistance rendered. This will change.
“Civil servants must serve the people of our country with commitment, diligence, humility, respect and honesty and make sure that they are effective agents of transformation,” the president said.
Mabuyane said the president had said that “if you want to deal with trust deficit, let’s deal with corruption.
“Let’s uproot wherever it shows its ugly head.
“No matter who does it – be it white collar crime or public representatives, let’s deal with it so that civil servants can understand that they are there as servants of the people”...