Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane has blamed circumstances beyond her control for her department’s dismal performance and high levels of irregular expenditure.
Mokonyane finally appeared before a meeting of the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) on Tuesday after repeated attempts to get her to account to Parliament.
Scopa has demanded she provide the names of officials responsible for irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure in her department, which was among the worst performers in the auditor-general’s outcomes.
Mokonyane said her department had executed projects well, but they were poorly maintained by municipalities.
In his 2015-16 audit report, auditor-general Kimi Makwetu said that the department had incurred fruitless and wasteful expenditure of R87.2m and irregular expenditure of R2.5bn.
Scopa chairman Themba Godi said another meeting would be scheduled "as soon as possible, with a special focus on the Lepelle Northern Water contract that increased from R502m to R2.7bn currently".
In a marathon five-hour committee meeting on Tuesday, Mokonyane was asked tough and pointed questions on who was responsible for incidents in her department including double and triple payments to companies and failure to pay others in 30 days.
She responded that her department was making headway in tackling these issues, and credited acting chief financial officer Sfiso Mkhize for this.
She also said that director-general Dan Mashitisho had been suspended for dereliction of duties.
"Sfiso Mkhize is here as the acting DG [director-general] and we have suspended the DG and charged him.
"His suspension ends on September 16 and relates to his failure to deliver what is required of him in terms of reporting," she said.
Legislation — the Water Service Act and the National Water Act — placed the burden of providing water services on the department, but did not give it adequate authority to exercise oversight on municipalities as stewards of the country’s water services, she said.
The minister said her department would review issues around the legislation.
DA MP Tim Brauteseth criticised Mokonyane as being unprofessional because she had no accompanying documents for her presentation. "Whatever you say about implementing agents, they were paid by people in your department, who allowed the double and triple payments to the value of R87m. I want their names," he said.
IFP MP Mkhuleko Hlengwa said the minister’s presentation had done little to ease his anxiety about the department.
"We want detail because we need to pick up trends," he said.
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