Johannesburg – Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has come out swinging, rebuking assertions that he should vacate his post in the department.
After numerous attacks resulting from a scathing auditor-general (AG) presentation made before the Parliament’s public enterprises portfolio committee last week by officials from the auditor-general’s office.
The DA’s Ghaleb Cachalia called for Gordhan to “resign with immediate effect”.
“Despite casting himself as an anti-corruption crusader who was going to clean up the mess created by the merchants of state capture, Gordhan has failed dismally. Major SOEs like Transnet and Eskom are teetering on the brink of collapse, and in doing so, they are threatening to destroy the economy as we know it,” Cachalia said.
He further said that if President Cyril Ramaphosa was a firm president, not the weak appeaser that he is who puts party unity and pay-offs before the interests and fortunes of the country, he would have long since ensured that the minister and department responsible for these key SOEs attended to the failures with a firm hand, opening the door to the private sector where required.
In response, Gordhan said that the presentation to the portfolio committee was a culmination of extensive and ongoing engagements aimed at aligning the work of the department with the stated objectives of the government, and that work was informed by the strategic framework that is beginning to yield significant improvements in the oversight of the SOEs.
“Granted, the department has never taken the view that its work would find support from its detractors and opportunists like Cachalia and others of his ilk, as they have decided to not recognise the extent of the damage wrought on Eskom, Transnet, SAA, and Denel in particular,” Gordhan said.
He also commended his department for not shirking its responsibility to provide custodial oversight and improve accountability, as highlighted by its achievement of five straight years of unqualified audits.
Gordhan said some of the attacks seem to come with the country heading into an election next year, and that it was unsurprising that there would be those hell-bent on undermining the work of his department for political leverage.
The Star