Parliament's committee on public accounts today held a hearing on the Auditor-General's report about the N2 Gateway Project. The special audit of the project was requested by the then Department of Housing. Today's hearing was attended by the national and provincial Departments of Human Settlements and the City of Cape Town Municipality.
Throughout the hearing, the departments and the city failed to answer questions from MPs emanating from the report. Instead of providing answers, the two entities spent much time blaming each other for some of the problems picked up by the Auditor-General. Because of this failure to respond sufficiently to questions put to them, the committee deemed it necessary to postpone the meeting to 5 August.
The committee is unhappy about this behaviour from these entities. In fact, this is becoming a worrying feature every time departments appear before Parliament. Only last week, the committee encountered the same behaviour from the Department of Police when it questioned its officials about the Auditor-General's report on the performance of police stations and 10111 centres. This behaviour cannot be accepted as it trivialises the whole process of oversight.
We would like to indicate that we are serious about our oversight as Parliamentarians and do not take kindly to the fact that departments come to meetings unprepared. As a committee we are not going to accept evasive responses from officials on issues that they should be accountable for.
Parliamentary rules clearly stipulate that a Parliamentary Committee has the power to summon any person to appear before it to give evidence on oath or affirmation, or to produce documents. One of the committees' functions is to exercise oversight over the executive, including monitoring of government departments and statutory bodies, and that is why we are here and we are not about to shirk this responsibility.
We also call on our fellow MPs in other committees to be equally vigilant when dealing with government departments and public entities.
For more information contact:
Kanyisa Ndyondya
Tel: 021 403 8041
Cell: 084 271 8116
E-mail: kndyondya@parliament.gov.za
Issued by: Parliament of South Africa
7 July 2009
