PAC BACK AT WORK

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.

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