Transport Minister pledges to get roads agency right
South Africa's Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele.
Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele has acknowledged that the turnaround plan meant to address challenges at the Road Traffic Management Cooperation (RTMC) has been a “daunting task”.
But he says improvements are being seen in various areas including fixing reported problems with the agency’s supply chain and cutting irregular expenditure to zero from the reported R360 million in the previous year.
“We have also seen stability and improvements in delivery. We can't claim that all is where we would have liked it to be, but there's remarkable improvement and that gives us confidence that our interventions were not in vain,” Ndebele told parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Transport on Tuesday.
He said there had been challenges at the RTMC since its inception, with the body having had four CEOs in a period of 7 years. It therefore follows that the stability of the entity has always been suspect.
“When I started as Minister of Transport in May 2009, I was inundated with various complaints about the then management and allegations of mismanagement at the RTMC. The then board assured me that everything was in good order,” he said.
But it was in February 2010 - when more allegations surfaced against the board and management - that a decision was taken to appoint a task team to look into the affairs of the RTMC and also appointed an Acting CEO.
The then CEO was placed on special leave until his suspension in April of the same year after a preliminary report from the task team confirmed some irregularities.
Today Ndebele said he had subsequently decided not to renew the boards' term “due to the preliminary findings that had pointed to a dysfunctional board, which had failed to provide the necessary oversight to the entity”.
The report of the task team, which was released in August 2010, lifted the lid on several irregularities and mismanagement issues at the agency. They ranged from a lack of skilled personnel to inadequate or absence of controls and abuse of supply chain procedures.
Four executives were suspended and charged for various transgressions of the Public Finance Management Act, treasury regulations and dereliction of duties.
“The forensic report has been handed over to the SAPS for further investigation and possible criminal charges to be laid against various individuals and companies that are implicated by the forensic report,” Ndebele said.
Furthermore, a civil case is being pursued to try and recover taxpayer monies which were found to have been wasted.
The Department of Transport would also be engaging SAICA to assist on the evaluation of the appointment of Deloitte who were allegedly hired irregularly to do what was then called a 'financial clean up' project, which resulted in irregular expenditure to the tune of R11 million.
“There is something amiss when a firm of Deloitte's status is hired in the way it was hired to do the kind of work that results in the tax payer being 'dubbed' and we therefore believe that this has to be investigated by the relevant body.
“As per the provisions of the Labour Relations Act, internal processes ensued which included the employees taking the RTMC to the labour court. All these led to unforeseen delays which created a challenge with the finalization of disciplinary procedures as it was envisaged.”
Ndebele said a shareholders committee meeting this week agreed to finalise the appointment of the board and a full time CEO. He was hopeful that going forward, South Africans would start to see an RTMC that will deliver to their expectations.
