The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Gauteng City Region Academy (GCRA) must account for the maladministration, tender fraud, corruption, and manipulation of Supply Chain Management procedures that transpired in her office.
According to the Auditor General (AG) report in the annual financial report for 2021/22, there were 10 findings against the CEO.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) takes these findings seriously and demands that the Gauteng Department of Education MEC, Matome Chiloane, must hold the CEO and all officials implicated to account.
The AG report found the CEO responsible for the irregularities below:
• Removing functions and budgets from managers and centralising them in her office,
• Irregularities involving the appointment of Mr Y,
• Irregularities in the appointment of a company called Tinikele,
• Irregularities in the appointment of a company DataSP to develop an online bursary platform, and to provide a structured platform to migrate the bursary information from hard copy to digital,
• Irregularities involving the appointment of Edgefield Marketing (Pty) to host learners for structured workplace learning,
• The removal of the Chief Director from the Covid-19 Youth Brigade project was found true,
• Irregularities in the appointment of Black Shepperd for projecting managing the Youth Brigade,
• The report compiled by Mankurwane was not provided to AG and no copies of developed policies on bursaries, internships, apprenticeship, learnership and skills programmes as claimed to have been done and Linothe and Tinkele also claimed to have drafted bursary policy.
All these allegations were substantiated. What is missing is decisive actions against those implicated including the CEO.
The DA demands that MEC Chiloane urgently implement recommendations as per the AG’s report. These include amongst others:
• Disciplinary, civil, and criminal to be taken against GCRA officials identified in the report.
• Criminal/Civil actions against identified service providers/ business entities identified in the report.
• HOD advise MEC, Treasury and AG of criminal charges.
• HOD restrict affected suppliers and directors from the procurement process.
The DA will be taking this matter to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature’s Education Portfolio Committee to ensure that there are resolutions adopted to ensure that all those implicated are held to account.