Fears over the looting of flood relief funds a ‘great source of shame’, says Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa says the concerns raised by different sectors of society over the looting of emergency flood relief funds in the wake of the devastating deluge in KwaZulu-Natal was a “great source of shame” for government.

Addressing a hybrid joint sitting of Parliament on Tuesday on the catastrophic floods, Ramaphosa said the fears raised by South Africans showed just how tired citizens had become of corruption.

“It is a great source of shame when this disaster struck, the most burning public debate, was around fears that the resources allocated to respond to this disaster would be misappropriated or wasted,” Ramaphosa said.

The president was addressing a joint sitting of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on the devastation caused by the catastrophic flooding in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Eastern Cape and North West.

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This follows the declaration of the national state of disaster by Cabinet to respond to the floods that have claimed the lives of 435 people in KZN alone.

At least 54 people were still missing or unaccounted for in the province since the natural disaster struck two weeks ago.

Stern reminder

Ramaphosa said concerns over the looting of relief funds were a stern reminder to government and businesses that citizens would not stand for “acts of self-enrichment at the expense of those who had already lost”.

He said government had put in place several measures in place to ensure the billions of rand required would not be misused or stolen through corrupt acts.

This included the Auditor-General (AG) conducting real-time audits on relief funds to ensure public monies were being appropriately accounted for.

“Several measures are being taken to straighten oversight and accountability. Working together with the National Treasury, the Auditor-General will conduct real-time audits on the emergency flood relief funds,” Ramaphosa said.

“These audits aim to prevent, detect and report on the findings to ensure an immediate response to prevent leakage, potential fraud as well as wastage.”

More money needed

Ramaphosa said more money would be needed to deal with the rebuilding work that needs to be done to repair damaged infrastructure in the three affected provinces.

“We have to ensure that all funds used to respond to this disaster are spent effectively,” he said.

Ramaphosa added that the details of all disaster-related public procurement would be published on Treasury’s website to allow citizens to scrutinise the transactions.

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