Eastern Cape determined to root out corrupt officials

With the Eastern Cape having the unwanted tag of being the corruption capital of South Africa, the Eastern Cape treasury department has vowed to crack down on officials caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar.

Finance MEC Mlungisi Mvoko said this would be done by ensuring supply chain management processes were always followed by government departments.

Delivering the treasury budget and policy speech on Thursday, Mvoko vowed to intensify their monitoring responsibility to ensure taxpayers’ money was used for what it was meant.

This would in turn improve good and clean governance, he said.

Mvoko said they were concerned with how some officials were abusing supply chain management processes to siphon money meant to deliver services to residents.

This, he said, would soon be addressed as plans were afoot to strengthen supply chain management through an innovative approach.

The MEC’s vow comes shortly after premier Oscar Mabuyane, while delivering the state of the province address in February, bemoaned how supply chain management was sometimes abused.

Mvoko said they were committed to rooting out fraud and corruption.

He said the provincial treasury and the Government Technical Advisory Centre (GTAC) had embarked on a review of supply chain management in the province.

“The aim is to identify best practices that can be included within the supply chain managemtn regulatory environment, identify current challenges, including underlying causes, and propose improvements.

“The outcomes of this review should lead to the development of a blueprint and a transition road map for a transformed regime in the province,” he said.

In most cases, government officials abuse supply chain management when tenders are awarded through deviation, which the provincial government has consistently said has to come to an end.

Mabuyane has previously vowed that officials found guilty of wrongdoing would be held accountable, saying the culture of impunity would no longer be tolerated.

Mvoko said they would turn the Eastern Cape’s fortunes around.

“Supply chain management is key to accelerated delivery of services, value for money in public spending and socioeconomic transformation leading to the empowerment of our people,” he said.

“The drive to implement local economic development procurement framework remains one of the key focus areas of provincial treasury to support departments to promote local content and procurement opportunities for local businesses.

“The intention is to ensure maximum retention of provincial fiscal spend in the province and to stabilise vulnerable and declining sectors as a result of the economic crisis and de-industrialisation.

“Furthermore, the implementation of the framework will assist to protect and safeguard productive capacity of existing industries and retain current jobs.”

With the overall economic growth in the province recording a decline of -7% in 2020, the unemployment rate was pushed to a record high of 47.9%, meaning the Eastern Cape shed more jobs than it created.

This was exacerbated by the devastating Covid-19 pandemic that turned the world upside down and shutdown economies.

When businesses were not paid within the 30-day stipulated period, it put more pressure on the already strained economy and threatened the survival of small, micro and medium enterprises, Mvoko said.

This would be addressed through ensuring that government departments pay within 30 days of businesses supplying invoices.

“This will assist to keep small businesses afloat and continue to contribute to job creation,” he said.

“The rollout of the invoice tracking online application is assisting businesses and government to chase invoice payments in line with our 30-day payment policy.

“We are happy that the province, on average, is able to pay suppliers within 14 days from the date the invoice was submitted.

“We will closely monitor the usage of the system and further make improvements. We will intensify our efforts in monitoring the implementation of the procurement plans to eradicate delays in service delivery.”

Turning his attention to government officials doing business with the state, Mvoko said this would be addressed as Bhisho was working with National Treasury to end the illegal practice.

This would be done by detecting government employees when they are registering their businesses on the central supplier database.

“In the meantime, we will intensify our efforts to identify government employees doing business with the state and escalate the matter to their respective departments for consequence management.”