Govt: ‘A clean bill’
An official announcement on whether the provincial task team responsible for the Section 100 (1) (b) intervention, placed on five Limpopo government departments in December 2011, would continue its intervention or withdraw from the province was due to be made this week.
POLOKWANE – An official announcement on whether the provincial task team responsible for the Section 100 (1) (b) intervention, placed on five Limpopo government departments in December 2011, would continue its intervention or withdraw from the province was due to be made this week.
The intervention focused on recovery, governance and sustainability and a diagnostic report completed in March 2012 identified the weaknesses within the province as being a lack of leadership and laxity of officials, poor systems, processes, skills and capacity, and a non-reliability of the IT infrastructure and or enabling systems and software.
The final review process would have taken place in June and a press conference was scheduled for earlier this week.
However, the press conference was postponed at short notice, and was due to take place either today (Thursday) or tomorrow (Friday).
Provincial government spokesperson, Phuti Seloba, said it was the provincial government’s understanding that the national intervention was a constitutional imperative.
“As provincial government, we are happy with the work done by the intervention team and we believe that the province has reached full recovery, with some reported savings and sound financial management,” Seloba said.
He added that provincial go-vernment anticipated that such successes, and a turn-around strategy would be presented to the executive council by the intervention team soon before their expected exit at the end of this month.
EFF provincial convenor, Michael Mathebe, said as far as the EFF was concerned, the task team had overstayed its welcome.
He said the intervention team had made the people of the province suffer a lot through payments being withheld to contractors and other service providers.
According to him, things (corruption) were “not so bad” when compared to other provinces. “Factions were punished because they did not support Zuma.
“Corruption is rife in other provinces such as Mpumalanga, too.”
Mathebe said with the new administration and new MEC’s in place, “it’s just replacing a (fat) black cat with a (fat) white one. Things will stay the same. Corruption will never end.”
DA Limpopo leader, Jacques Smalle, said he had heard that the intervention would be terminated soon, and that the announcement would be made next week when the legislature assumed its duties again. However, he said he was not so sure that the province’s financial crisis was resolved.
He was not convinced that the administrators did a good job in the province. “If they could walk away saying they had left behind a healthy administration, then it could be said that the intervention was successful. The supply chain and other functions of departments are not functioning well yet,” he said.
Asked her viewpoint on whether the intervention should be terminated or not, ANC spokesperson Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, said the intervention was initiated after sufficient consideration of the situation in Limpopo. “The process undergoes continuous evaluation of its continued relevance and necessity. As the ANC we are confident that the evaluation of the progress made will be supported by the necessary and appropriate decision at national government level.”
