Big heads set to roll in Bhisho

Eastern Cape Health superintendent Lawrence Boya who is to be charged in terms of the provisions of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) with financial misconduct need not feel alone as he is to be joined by three other heads of department as the Bhisho Legislature’s standing committee on public accounts gets tough.

Heads of the department of Education, Social Development and Economic Development and Environmental Affairs are all facing criminal charges in terms of the PFMA and once the legislature adopts the report of the standing committee they will be charged. Joining them will be the head of the Eastern Cape Liquor Board, Advocate Naledi Burwana-Bisiwe.

Chairman of the committee Zingisa Mkabile told the Legislature at the start of debate on the SCOPA report that the findings generally “point to the fundamental challenge of lack of proper control systems, monitoring and requisite policy implementation and evaluation systems which generally plague the provincial public administration”.

With regard to the heads of department and head of the Liquor Board, SCOPA concluded that they had failed to convince the committee that there was “no wilful or element of neglect” in their failure to account properly for the department’s financial affairs.