Scopa lambasts Correctional Services

The Department of Correctional Services has come under fire from Parliament’s finance watchdog, the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), for collapsing systems, senior managers’ lack of accountability, conflicts of interest and a R10 billion tender for building prisons. Members of the standing committee have also reserved more questions for Correctional Services on the R10bn tender given to a company with no capacity to build prisons. Angry members of Scopa told the department on Wednesday they would not tolerate a lack of concrete answers to its inquiries and that the department must provide detailed responses at their next meeting, next week. This was after Correctional Services failed on numerous occasions to provide detailed responses, forcing the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Mike Masutha, to intervene in certain instances.

The Department of Correctional Services appeared before Scopa over its annual report for 2013/14. Members of the committee were not happy with the lack of detailed responses from the newly appointed National Commissioner for Correctional Services, Zach Modise, and his team. ANC MP Thapelo Chiloane fired the first salvo over the department’s failure to submit its financial statements quarterly. Chiloane said even the Auditor-General, Kimi Makwetu, said there was a lack of internal controls in the department. The department was accused by MPs of ignoring the financial reports of two consulting firms, yet it paid them R7 million. Scopa chairman Themba Godi also bemoaned a lack of action by Correctional Services against officials for conflicts of interest. Godi demanded a list of officials involved in companies doing business with the department and failing to disclose this information.

He called for disciplinary action against the implicated officials. Modise said he would provide such a list to the standing committee as well as the amounts involved in the tenders. “We have a list of the 18 officials that have performed remunerative work outside their employment,” he said. “I cannot say for certain if these people are still in the department, as there are investigations being done,” added Modise. He admitted that Makwetu had found in his audited financial statements that a number of rules and regulations were being flouted by his officials in supply chain management. This was an area that was being addressed by the department’s management. The department was also taken to task by MPs for not having an overtime policy in place, leaving the system open to abuse. The department’s head of human resources, Teboho Mokoena, said the draft policy was being finalised and a new policy would be submitted at the end of July.

The department had in the past had a serious problem with the abuse of its overtime policy. The Correctional Services minister at the time, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, scrapped the overtime system after the department had a budget shortfall of R500 million because of overtime payments. This had drawn the ire of the portfolio committee on correctional services at the time and the department was now trying to correct this. Mokoena said they were busy fixing this policy to avoid the abuse of the past, which had resulted in overtime payment spiralling out of control.