Times Of Swaziland: PAC BACK AT WORK

PAC BACK AT WORK
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Sibongile Sukati on 04/06/2019 09:51:00


MBABANE – The sittings of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) are back on.
This was confirmed by the PAC Chairperson and Matsanjeni North Member of
Parliament (MP), Phila Buthelezi, yesterday. This follows a meeting which was
held with the Speaker, Petros Mavimbela and some members of the committee
yesterday morning in Parliament. The sittings were unceremoniously ended about
two weeks when MP Buthelezi said they were suspended indefinitely. At the time,
MP Buthelezi did not forward the reasons for the sudden stopping of the
sessions, and left all those present wondering what had happened.
The burning issue that was to be discussed during the last sitting was the
Gege-Sicunusa Road, where the auditor general uncovered that about E576 million
of taxpayer’s money went down the drain for the road which was not completed.
The announcement of the halting of all PAC sittings was made after the committee
had held a caucus which was about an hour long.
“The sittings are back and we will start on Wednesday (tomorrow),” said MP
Buthelezi. Again, the MP was not forthcoming with the details on the full
resolutions of the private meeting.
However, high level consultations were being held to discuss a way forward, on
how the issue which had initially halted the sittings will be handled.
Witnesses
At the last sitting, seven witnesses had been called to appear before the
committee and these were former Ministers of Public Works and Transport Lindiwe
Dlamini and Ntuthuko Dlamini. However, Lindiwe who is now Senate President was
not present in the House of Assembly while Ntuthuko was in. Others who had been
invited as witnesses were former Principal Secretary in the ministry Cyril
Kunene, retired Chief Roads Engineer Trevor Tshabalala and Albert Dlamini. Peter
Ngwenya from Kukhanya Construction was also invited by the PAC, however, he was
not present and instead three other representatives of Kukhanya, who was the
contractor for the project, were present. Sandile Makhubu from ZMCK Consulting
(the project consultants) was also present. The halting of the sittings had not
gone down well with the former minister (Ntuthuko), who demanded an explanation
and had to be calmed down by MP Buthelezi.