House Chair, the EFF rejects the Standing Committee on Finance Budgetary Review and Recommendation, BRR, Report.
This afternoon, the Auditor-General, AG, just announced that irregular expenditure has increased to R62,6 billion.
It is the job of the Standing Committee on Finance to ensure that the Treasury and the Minister of Finance do their job to ensure that we do not see figures like we just saw this afternoon.
But reality is that Parliament has no capacity to properly do oversight over the Treasury and the Minister of Finance. Instead, the standing committee works like Minister's parliamentary desk.
We raised this in the Fifth Parliament. There's too much emphasis
... routine legislation, some rushed while misconduct, corruption and disregard for the law goes unnoticed.
Money was stolen during the implementation of the Integrated Financial Management, the famous IFMS; but no one has been arrested despite damning forensic report.
People were moved from Sars to Treasury by former Minister Pravin Gordhan without following any processes and were paid big salaries and they continue to get paid. People are appointed without following tender processes and we are told they are the only one qualified to do the work.
Katherine Gibson was appointed as the consultant and paraded here in Parliament as the public servant when she was not; and paid a lot of money just because of a personal relationship with one of the Deputy Director- General, DDG, Ismail Momoniat.
Some white consultant from London was appointed to write a report on transformation. To this day, people from Venda are still waiting for their pension which the Treasury said they must be paid, but the Treasury and the Minister refuse to pay. [Interjections.]
What we have here is the department that operates like it's above the law [Time expired.] Thank you. [Applause.]