The Department of Water and Sanitation is swinging the axe on officials who were involved in corrupt activities that led to irregular and wasteful expenditure amounting to R31 billion in the past ten years.

This is according to statement issued by the Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation on Friday.

Addressing parliamentarians during her Budget Vote speech, Lindiwe Sisulu said 97 officials had been found guilty by an internal disciplinary structure for being involved in irregular and wasteful expenditure.

24 of these had resigned while 16 were cleared of all the charges against them.

However, the department’s Acting Director-General, Mbulelo Tshangana, has established the Stabilisation Committee that is investigating additional 166 cases that came as a result of the Auditor General’s reports over the years.

“The cases are at an advanced stage and ongoing as we put in place the necessary support structures to ensure there is no disruption of the work of the Department”, Sisulu said.

Water boards which are the department’s entities that supply bulk water to municipalities, have not escaped Sisulu’s crusade.

She has ordered investigations into the affairs of the Lepelle Northern Water Board in Limpopo, the Amatola Water Board in the Eastern Cape, while a third investigation is underway at Sedibeng Water Board.

“In the course of the investigations, Lepelle and Amatola have suspended their respective Chief Executive Officers and disciplinary processes against them have been instituted. Both executives have received their charges and dates for the hearings have been set for next month”, Sisulu added.

Sisulu said she had enlisted the Special Investigation Unit (SIU), the Hawks and the whole justice system help the Department to find closure on all these matters, ensuring that all officials understand that corruption will no longer be tolerated.

During her address, Sisulu also pointed out that the Auditor-General had always complained about the lack of consequence management within the department.

“We are now saying there is consequence management and we hope this will filter through also to the service providers who corrupt. We want to send a public message that we are cleaning up the Department.

“We have had to go through all this grubby work because that is what the President asked me to do when I arrived here. I was convinced that it was necessary for the image of the department, because as you will see in both the Water and Sanitation Master Plans, we depend a great deal on investments to deliver and for that to happen we have to convince investors that they can rely on us and should invest in us”, said the Minister.

She added that the department had been restructured in accordance with the principles of good governance and a Master Plan to ensure fitness for purpose and stabilisation of the department.

“We received assistance from the Department of Public Service and Administration with regards to a restructuring exercise that will ensure all critical posts are duly identified and filled. We have to ensure that especially at Top Management level, all incumbents are truly fit for purpose because that is the core of the delivery of the department’s mandate. That exercise has been completed and since the beginning of the current financial year, we are in the process of stabilising the department accordingly.”

The review process included a framework on how employees of the department would be accommodated in the new organisational structure, ensuring a fair and transparent process that protected the jobs for all those who qualified.

The implementation of the structure and supporting policies would go a long way towards improving the efficiency of the department and the management and governance of the water sector as a whole.

She described the department’s Master Plan as an outstanding document that was hailed as a ‘strategic piece of work which has the world’s attention and with its release, is something of which South Africa can be very proud’.