The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) has requested the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) to provide monthly progress reports on Operation Ziveze to monitor the investigation of the 3 000 unidentified persons who are ghost employees at PRASA.
SCOPA today held a hearing with PRASA on its 2020/21 annual report. The Chairperson of SCOPA, Mr Mkhuleko Hlengwa, said: “It is important that we get an action plan in so far as PRASA dealing with the matter is concerned.”
The Acting CEO of PRASA, Mr David Mphelo, said PRASA is running three phases in relation to Operation Ziveze. “We have gone past phase one; we are now in phase two, where we are analysing out these people that have not done physical verification signed off by their managers.”
PRASA is investigating whether they are South African citizens or have permits to be in the country, if they are not South Africans. “We have under 2 000 workers where we see there is no evidence of physical verification in one way or another,” said Mr Mphelo.
PRASA will go into the system and investigate when these people were registered and who loaded them on to the system for salary purposes. This will reveal any fraudulent activity and the dates when they were loaded. “This will give us an indication and quantify how much money was looted in that space, activate and cut them out. When we have quantified the money and find the associated individuals, whether they are in the system or not, those that loaded these individuals in the system will be handed over to the police in phase three for fraud, identity issues and for an investigation with the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).”
Mr Hlengwa, however, raised a concern with the lack of detail in the report on Operation Ziveze. It appears that a concrete modus operandi to deal with this issue is lacking, as the report is still very theoretical, he said. “Can we get monthly reports on operations in terms of the progress that has been made to deal with the issues contained therein. Because the matter is very serious, as it speaks to internal controls, audit, functionality of human resources and the decentralisation of the operations of Transnet may lend into some of these problems and so one is mindful of that.”
Mr Hlengwa says PRASA is dealing with 3 000 persons at this point. “That is a huge amount of money that has been lost by PRASA and its not accidental that those people are on the payroll. We really need to move with a particular sense of speed and urgency. That is why I expected something far more concrete because this was a matter raised in January and we had indicated that we will deal with it when we deal with the annual report.”
The Minister of Transport, Mr Fikile Mbalula agreed with SCOPA on the slow pace of dealing with the matter. “One of the things I said on Operation Ziveze is that when dealing ghost workers, you don’t philosophise, you institute forensic investigation. You bring the police immediately. You have identified a crime; you are sitting on it. You are sitting with 3 000 people who could not come and say I work here. You stop their salaries, they don’t come. You’ve got people with no matric at PRASA. You have people with fake IDs at PRASA. You have people who can’t come forward and account where do they work. It’s clear you are dealing with a scam,” Mr Mbalula said.
Minister Mbalula hopes PRASA’s report on this issue will be different when it comes before SCOPA again. “If it is not, I will be the first to admit that we have failed our people. I am very disappointed with the past year, in particular from a management perspective.”
Mr Hlengwa says PRASA must first get its governance and business model right before it can rollout the services in a manner that will do justice to its mandate.
Faith Ndenze
29 March 2022
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