Home expenses of South African ministers came under inspection as it was discovered that huge sums have been spent on curtains, kitchens and killing cockroaches.
The Opposition Party, the Democratic Alliance, said it was submitting a complaint to the anti-graft watchdog about wat appeared to “brazen corruption and tender inflation” in the upkeep of the ministers homes.
“Our country simply cannot afford to keep paying for luxury for the luxury lifestyles of Ministers who live like Rockstar’s, while load-shedding, unemployment and poverty are at crisis level,” Leon Schreiber, DA’s shadow minister for public service said.
This comes after the government revealed that between 2019 and 2022 it spent about 93 million rand($4.8M) to maintain 97 properties occupied by public representatives, including government ministers in Cape Town and Pretoria.
Refurbishing a Cape Town kitchen costs taxpayers 1.4M rand, while replacing a curtain rail and getting rid of cockroaches at two separate Pretoria addresses were charged 54,000 and 240,000rand respectively.
President
The reveal is likely to add to worries of President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was believed tp a graft-busting saviour after the corruption-tainted tenure of predecessor Jacob Juma, but has since then had scandals of his own.
A huge amount of money was spent to install , repair or refill power generators that keep the lights to the ministers homes amid the huge energy crisis that has most of nation left in the dark for a long time.
Swimming pool maintenance also had a huge expenditure, with 388 invoices filed over the period taking into consideration in what the DA said was “the single most common maintenance expense.”
The revelation, came in response to a parliament question filed by the DA, which prompted Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Shile Zikalala to order probe into the matter saying some costs were “not justifiable”.
However the minister attempted to defend his cabinet colleagues from blame , with his office accusing “service providers” it said ,it seemed to be using the government as a “milking cow”
“As government we are not prepared to defend the indefensible but we will exercise our strong oversight to clean up this area, which is unfairly discrediting public official,” Zikalala said on Saturday
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