WATER AND SANITATION
Gugile Nkwinti battles to clean up water department's financial mess
The minister delivers a dire assessment of his department, which the DA slams as ‘infected with a toxic virus’
The financial mismanagement in the past few years has come back to haunt the Department of Water and Sanitation. Delivering his budget speech in Parliament on Tuesday, Water and Sanitation Minister Gugile Nkwinti said his department was struggling to deal with the realities of budget constraints and challenges emanating from previous years, as some historical commitments were not adequately budgeted for. Nkwinti provided a frank assessment of the state of his department, which is mired in a financial crisis. Earlier in 2018, Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts and the water committee resolved to establish a commission of inquiry into the affairs of the department. Its crisis has largely been attributed to poor leadership, deviations over the years, including duplicate payments, spending on projects that were not budgeted for, and payments for incomplete projects. The department was led by Nomvula Mokonyane, who was shifted to the communications portfolio in the 2018 c...
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