Minister Patricia De Lille bids farewell to DPWI staff

Former public works and infrastructure (DPWI) minister Patricia de Lille has bid farewell to former colleagues at the department.

“As I leave to serve South Africa in another capacity, I wish to thank the acting director-general, Dr Alec Moemi, and the staff in the department for their work and support during my time in DPWI,” De Lille said.

New path

President Cyril Ramaphosa has deployed De Lille to the department of tourism.

In an open letter, De Lille said: “One of the key successes over the past three and a half years is that DPWI has maintained a record of reducing the number of overdue payments to service providers and recently managed to keep the onetime 30-day payment rate above 95%,” De Lille said.

The department has maintained a high record of on-time 30-day payments as prescribed in the Public Finance Management Act. “For the week that has just passed, DPWI made 95.1% of payments within the 30-day period to service providers,” De Lille said.

Vote of thanks

“I wish to thank the chief financial officer of DPWI, Mandla Sithole, and the finance department for their diligence on the 30-day payments and for successfully implementing the Reapatala payment system to ensure that we pay service providers on time.

I encourage them to ensure that the department continues to do so.” She also thanked the department for its performance with regard to land reform.

It had managed to release thousands of hectares since June 2019 for land reform purposes. “DPWI has released 218 land parcels measuring 31 439 hectares for restitution.

Last year’s target for restitution was 10 000 hectares and this was exceeded.

Title deeds

“In November 2022, 23 families in the Chris Hani District who had been forcibly removed by the apartheid regime, received title deeds to the land they were removed from in the area known as Thornhill in the Eastern Cape.

“In January, I also announced I approved the release of 1199 hectares of land, valued at approximately R7.4 million, to assist in settling a land restitution claim by the Kaapsche Hoop community in Mpumalanga.” Since May 2019, DPWI has released 25 549 ha of agricultural land – 125 parcels) – for the redistribution programme.

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