Gauteng City Region Academy (GCRA) learners continue to suffer without much-needed learning resources, yet the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) Head of Department (HOD), Edward Mosuwe is shielding its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who is implicated in maladministration, corruption and fraud as identified by the Auditor General(AG).
It is unacceptable that GCRA is failing to provide necessary support to young people like learnerships, bursaries and apprenticeships because of a corrupt official.
There were several allegations against the CEO, and they were substantiated as facts.
This includes amongst others, appointment of Mr Y, centralising budget functions from line managers to the CEO’s office, appointing companies which claimed to have developed bursary, learnership, apprenticeship policies while the auditor general couldn’t find existence of such policies.
While there are three companies which claimed to have developed such policies and have been paid for the services rendered.
The recommendations were made by the AG that the department’s HOD should open a criminal case against all officials involved in this corruption scandal and inform the Treasury, AG and the department’s MEC.
Instead of implementing such straightforward recommendations, the HOD opted to appoint a law firm to look at the matter. This is delaying tactic costing department more money instead of actioning AG’s recommendations.
The DA has written to the Gauteng Department of Education MEC, Matome Chiloane, demanding that he must urgently take action against the HOD for failing to implement the Auditor General’s recommendations.
It is unacceptable that the accounting officer is playing delaying tactics to avoid taking actions against the wrongdoers.
Certain actions should have been taken such as opening criminal cases, and even suspending the CEO.
The DA has noted that the department is appointing a law firm to consider the evidence and advise on the appropriate course of action that the department should take. However, there are recommendations to be implemented.
The DA will continue to fight to ensure that the AG’s recommendations are implemented by the HOD. It is high time that MEC Chiloane instil confidence to the people of Gauteng that he does not tolerate maladministration, corruption, and fraud under his watch.