According to a written response by the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Ronald Lamola, on the Parliament Monitoring Group (PMG) to the Democratic Alliance’s (DA’s) Haseenabanu Ismail on the matter, it is revealed only R19 591 of the over R1 million that was inflated by the service providers in their PPE quotations to the provincial government and later paid out, has been recovered. The outstanding funds are being deemed as debt owed to the North West government by the embattled service providers.

This means that over R1 million still needs to be recovered at present, pertaining to the inflated PPE prices. Overall, the SIU has probed Covid-19 tenders worth R 15 million, involving 21 service providers in the North West. At this stage, only one government official has had internal disciplinary proceedings instituted against him/her, whereas seven service providers are under investigation by police for charging Value Added Tax (VAT) when they were not registered as VAT vendors. Lamola says the investigation was meant to have been concluded at the end of October 2021.

Civil proceedings have been instituted against one service provider regarding a tender worth R256 000.

According to the medical brief, roughly R5 billion of the R10,38 billion spent on Covid-19 relief efforts in South Africa are under investigation. The South African Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts has expressed its growing concern over allegations of corruption relating to Covid-19 procurement popping up and demand that those implicated, to be successfully prosecuted in order to turn the tide of corruption in government.

OFM News