Tebogo Kalake
Somebody help me. If the DCEC breaks the law and administrative rules, where does one go to seek remedy?
The DCEC as an office is an important institution of democracy.
This institution can only achieve this if it is independent and subject only to Parliament and the Constitution.
It must be impartial and exercise its functions without fear, favour or prejudice. But if this institution does not do it right, who do we turn to?
One area about this institution that has not been fully canvassed is whether there is any mechanism in place that monitors the activities of the DCEC; other than DPSM or Permanent Secretary to the President (PSP).
We are not aware of an independent board or committee in place that can receive and address professional complaints that emanate from the society not even the business community.
The DCEC is manned by human beings who are susceptible to errors and misjudgments in the course of their duties.
This may result in prejudicing certain people or institutions in the process.
So, if this happens, where do we go?
Is DPSM or PSP competent enough (in terms of capacity) to effectively monitor an institution like the DCEC?
Elsewhere in the world, there are institutions that have oversight functions over such bodies as the DCEC.
Such could be parliamentary committees that oversee the department. I am not aware of any such facilities in our case.
Otherwise the material errors and the flouting of laws and regulations now common at DCEC would not be happening.
Hence my question, where does one go if he witnesses the DCEC in this situation? Let me just highlight a few such incidents, which, I believe, justify the need to have a body that monitors the DCEC.
The first is to demonstrate how DCEC is the worst department when it comes to financial saving.
The DCEC has three sections within itself – Corruption Prevention, Public Education and Investigation.
The latter is subdivided into groups composed of 5 or 6 officers. There is no proper coordination of trips (local and international) within these groups.
You will meet two or three officers from different groups in Maun, for instance, on “investigation”.
When you assess the purpose of their trips, you will notice that the tasks could have been done by one officer.
There will be two officers from one group going to RSA this week and, next week, the other two leave for the same country.
The records at the Ministry of Finance can bear witness to this. The DCEC has a serious problem of managing trips and this is done in such a way that the Auditor General (AG) cannot detect any improper planning on the part of the department.
Some of the work that they carry out at these trips could be combined and reduce the number of officers and, therefore, minimise expenditure.
In fact, some of the trips are not necessary at all. They are no different from other departments despite the nature of their work. If you check the records again, you will notice that as the last financial year was coming to close, there were a number of trips, some international, with the intention of exhausting their vote for that year. Did you expect this from the DCEC? A bad attitude towards saving indeed!
For instance, it would not be cost effective for them to travel to RSA to see how their officers are performing at their respective Universities. Why can’t they ask those officers to submit their results and any other information that they might need for their administrative purposes?
In fact, the government pays some education attach├®s in South Africa for this job.
What justification will be made for the government to pay two cheques to persons performing the same duty?
Are we saying this is a department with a positive attitude towards cutting costs? Who do we see in this case to complain to?
Also, the issues and complaints of corruption that we always inundate the DCEC with are prevailing within the institution itself.
And this includes recruitment.
There are officers who were employed because they are friends to some senior officers and some promotions are characterised by mystery.
In fact, there is a crises looming within the department that is very much similar to that of Mr. Mhlauli but relating to recruitment and appointment. Now, if Mr. Mhlauli can be charged for his acts, where do we go if we are to expose a similar thing at the DCEC?
Finally, if the DCEC only depends on the Honourable Molefhabangwe for information relating to corruption by the “big fish”, does the DPSM or PSP ever demand an explanation to this? Is this the reason why the Air Botswana tender was conceived, executed and passed to Parliament without any intervention from the DCEC, until the politicians again (Molefhabangwe’s colleagues) brought up the matter?
The crucial question is how many of such tenders are awarded under these dubious circumstances.
How much is the government losing in such tenders when we have an institution that is mandated to protect the country’s economy and, therefore, our democracy not doing its job?
Where do we go as citizens when these things happen?
I am even more perplexed by the fact that the DCEC called a press conference sometime this year to give a report on a specific investigation.
Since the nation is usually told that the DCEC investigations take long to complete due to their complexity and shortage of manpower, is this not reason enough to question why this particular one was completed within the record short space of time?
How did they manage to complete it within this short space of time? It involves foreign companies, did they visit these companies? Why did they not interview the people who prompted this investigation (politicians as always)?
Because the Director could not satisfactorily answer these questions in a press conference that he initiated, where do we go for an explanation? Is the DPSM or PSP capacitated enough to give an explanation when the person responsible (mong a loso) could not.
The dent suffered by the DCEC to its integrity as an institution is not going to be undone by allowing the situation to continue. Denial of the facts is not going to turn the tide of public perception about this office.
The bad reputation of the DCEC, does not only demonstrate the caliber of the man at the top, but what is at stake here is the dignity, essence and integrity of our democracy.
