The Minister of Public Works dismisses with contempt the insinuation in the media that he failed to cooperate with National Treasury investigation into the Nkandla matter. These reports published and broadcast, yesterday, June 28, give the impression that the Minister or the Department was attempting to stifle the investigation by Treasury. Nothing could be further from the truth.

To set the record straight, the Department co-operated and supplied all relevant information in its possession to the investigators appointed by Treasury. The Minister is not responsible for missing documents or information that was in a poor state.
It is public knowledge that there was maladministration in this project and missing documents was one of the many problems. It is critical to note that our own Professional Architect alerted the Special Investigating Unit and Treasury as early as April that the consultant’s drawings of the project contained insufficient and scant information that would make the cost calculation difficult.

It should be recalled that Minister Thulas Nxesi took over when the Nkandla project had  been implemented and completed. Due to his concerns, he instituted an investigation that made several recommendations, including that the matter be referred to the SIU for further investigation. It is a matter of public record that the Department co-operated with all investigation teams, including the Office of the Public Protector, SIU and National Treasury. It is for this reason that the Minister of Public Works was not even cited as a respondent in the Constitutional Court matter as one of the parties who failed or refused to comply with the Public Protector’s report.

The Public Protector’s report confirmed that her office received “voluminous documents received from the Department including amongst others, cost estimates, bill of quantities prepared by R&G Consultant, designs and site plans of the project...”. These documents were in possession of the Department and they were made available. If the documents are not at the state they should be, the Minister cannot manufacture them. The maladministration and poor planning of the Nkandla project was highlighted by the Ministerial task team long before SIU and Public Protector raised the point.  Failure to record minutes, file important documents, update drawings and sketches etc was the frustration of all involved.

As correctly pointed out by the Public Protector, as the demands from officials and other stakeholders were received, designs were changed which resulted in more expenditure.
The Department had appointed service providers or consultants to prepare drawings. For example the Architect was appointed and paid to prepare designs, R&G Consultants were appointed and paid to prepare bill of quantities. Clearly if such drawings and bill of quantities are not updated to include the final built drawings, demonstrate the Minister’s long held view which is supported by SIU and Public Protector that the project was badly handled from beginning to the end.

It cannot be the fault of the Minister of a Department when consultants appointed by officials without following proper Supply Chain prescripts were paid exorbitant amount of monies but still failed to produce updated drawings and bill of quantities.

 

Issued by Department of Public Works